


Predawn Girls

by Anonymous



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Everything is just really different okay, Alternate Universe - Organized Crime, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, And then they were sad forever, F/F, I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumors floating around St Justine's School for Girls say that Sumi Seta is an arsonist, a thief, or maybe just a thug. Yoko Hanamura learns that the truth is sadly more lurid.</p><p>Updates halted for the time being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Girls

**Author's Note:**

> The [prompt](http://badx2bathhouse.livejournal.com/543.html?thread=136735#t136735) is, in itself, quite the story. The salient bits are this: _The people and events of the game are mostly the same, but Yasogami High is now St. Yasogami's School for Girls, a small, well-known, all-girls boarding school with a reputation for taking in delinquents. Local families get a huge discount for sending their daughters there, as a "reward" for putting up with the place. Nearly all the girls are dangerous in some way._
> 
> I'm posting this a bit reluctantly. I'm not fond of this one at all, and the back half needs a lot more revision than I care to give it at the moment. As such, the last few chapters are on hold until I work them up a bit more.

“Arson,” Tae said, tossing a thousand yen bill onto the center of the desk. 

“Oh, please,” Ai said. “I know girls like her. She’s probably here because she stole a hundred grand from some small town mall.” A ten thousand yen bill landed on top of Tae’s offering. 

Tae chewed on her yakisoba bread for a while. Then she said, “You rich bitch.” 

“She looks dangerous to me,” Kozue said. She shoved some more rice into her mouth, and then put down another ten thousand yen bill. “I say it was sexual assault.” 

As a boarding school, classes at St Justine numbered no more than fifty per grade, split into two classes of twenty or twenty-five. 2-A, which had both Ebihara and Ichijo in its ranks, had just eighteen students, while 2-B had twenty-four students, and just got a transfer with a GPS-tracking anklet. Rumors had it that money had been involved. The fact that Amagi and her pet dog was in 2-B never bothered those with a mind for conspiracy. Amagi, after all, had reasons for wanting to blend in.

“Oh, _please_ ,” Ai snorted. She poked at her salad, and sighed in a way that was almost certainly pure drama. 

“We shouldn’t be betting on this anyway,” Tae said. 

“You could always pay off your debt by selling your tracksuit,” Kozue said. 

“Ugh,” Ai said. “Who would want that? Why don’t we bet alcohol?”

“I’m dry,” Tae said. “And Konishi’s sister just died.” 

It wasn’t that Nao and Saki had been close. Or if they were, no one could tell. But it seemed politer to give Nao some distance. Even Ai, rude as she was, seemed to think it would be tactless to bother Nao. 

“Where’s the new girl?” Kozue said. She scooped up the money, and slid it into the secret pocket in her coat. Their lunch break would be over soon. As Tae’s best friend and a family friend of the Ebiharas, the three of them agreed to have Kozue keep the money on her. “Maybe she knows something about Seta-san.” 

“I’m telling you, she’s nothing special.” 

“Maybe,” Kozue said. But she didn’t look convinced. She touched Ozawa’s arm as she swished by. “Hey, can you get the new girl?”

Ozawa’s eyebrows, thin as blades of grass, pushed together. “Hanamura?” 

“Who else?”

“You’re lucky I’m on my way to drop off a script to someone right now,” Ozawa said. Unnecessarily, if someone were to ask for Kozue’s opinion. The two rooms were next door. Ozawa and Ebihara avoided eye contact with one another, Ozawa turning her heel as quickly as possible, and Ebihara examining her nails and letting off a sad, despondent sigh.

“I like her,” Kozue said. “I bet she plays something. Basketball.”

“Soccer.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Ai said. She stood. “I’m going for a smoke.” 

Kozue watched her go for just a moment. Then: “Her shoulders are too developed for a soccer player. You can tell, even under her uniform.”

“Are you kidding me? Look at her legs. She definitely plays something that involves legs.” 

“Flute,” someone else said. They ignored her. 

“You were checking out her legs?” Kozue said. 

“I bet you only noticed her shoulders because she had no boobs.” 

“I have nice legs.”

Tae’s brow wrinkled. She wanted to check, yet knew that she shouldn’t. It was a relief when Yoko fell through the door, disheveled and harried as always. 

“Geeze, what now?” she said. 

“Pull up,” said Kozue. “I’ll give you some of my lunch.”

Yoko hesitated. Kozue, ever so slightly, smiled. She knew, without having to ask or even look too hard, that Satonaka had gotten a hold of Yoko this morning for one thing or another. Yoko had the look of someone who invited trouble to come to her: her messy hair, her sometimes-mismatched socks, but especially her big, nervous eyes that always looked from side-to-side, as though every moment in life was a road that needed to be crossed. She joined Kozue and Tae at the desk, and then took, from her pocket, a plastic spoon. 

“Help yourself,” Kozue said. “My maid made too much this morning anyway.”

The spoon hovered over Kozue’s lunch box. Yoko’s cheeks went red. “Satonaka took my lunch again, so—”

“Don’t piss her off so much,” Tae said. “She’s pretty cool once you get to know her.”

“You’re not the one with ‘fresh meat’ on your forehead.” But she dug in after that, anyway.

Kozue waited until Yoko had eaten at least enough for a snack, and then blocked Yoko’s spoon with her chopsticks. “What’s Seta-san like?” 

“Quiet, I guess. Sits next to Satonaka.”

“Oh, that’ll be fun,” Tae said. “You think that’ll break those two up?”

Kozue and Tae shared a look over Yoko’s head. No, they realized. No, probably not. Satonaka and Amagi fit so well together that it was as though they had been made for each other. Or maybe Satonaka had been made for Amagi. 

“What?” Yoko said. “You mean Satonaka’s a lesbo?”

Tae and Kozue burst out laughing, mostly in disbelief. Neither could believe that Yoko hadn’t heard the rumors; but she wasn’t ‘new girl’ for nothing. Kozue took back her lunch box and said nothing. Yoko would have to learn self-preservation the hard way.

“Tell you what,” Tae said. “You chat up Seta and find out what she’s doing here, and I’ll talk to Satonaka and see if she’ll take it easier on you.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Sure,” Tae said, while Kozue coughed, politely, in the background. “Ai-san thinks Seta looks like a nice girl. I bet she’ll be willing to answer anything you ask.” 

It was almost as though a sun was breaking across Yoko’s face. But the sunrise tapered back into a stormy, conflicted expression soon enough. “You better not be lying,” Yoko said, and sulked back to 2-B. 

“Satonaka’s never going to go easy.”

“Yeah,” Tae said. She had the grace to look, for a moment, a little ashamed for her lie. And then she said, “I still think it’s arson.” 

“You’re on.”

 

*

 

Seta had a face like a fox, small and dainty and sharp. Pretty wouldn’t be the right word to describe her, but Yoko didn’t want to think what words _could_ describe her. She had a subdued, tired look to her, but maybe it was just the strange, ashen color of her short, styled hair. It brought out the dark circles beneath her eyes. She wore the uniform maybe too well; the black skirt fell in an excruciatingly straight line above her knees, the sailor collar and the yellow scarf beneath it centered and even, and the cuffs of her shirt buttoned and arranged to perfection. The only suggestion of something off was Satonaka had smiled at Seta and introduced herself with a handshake. Whenever Satonaka looked at Yoko, it always seemed to come with the promise of either pain, more pain, or just pain in general. 

Class was barely over before Yoko grabbed onto Seta’s shoulder. She had expected, maybe, Seta to whip around and smack her in the face, but instead Seta turned, not with the practiced, refined grace of the old blood, but as though her body knew how to get from one point to another with the fewest amount of movements possible. The shoulder in Yoko’s hand remained loose; not even Seta’s hair seemed startled. 

“Yes?” Seta said. 

“I’m Yoko Hanamura,” she said. “We, you know. We met a little earlier.” Outside, in the trashcans. Not Satonaka’s fault. Yoko was perfectly capable of doing stupid things to herself without anyone’s assistance. “I thought we could talk or something. A little girl-on-girl. … Chat. Not other stuff. Unless you need help getting back to your room. Then we can talk and walk at the same time.” 

Seta watched. The fog swirled past the windows. Yoko swore a cricket chirped. She worked on a visualization exercise while Seta stared at her. Mostly, Yoko was picturing the world without her in it. Yeah, that didn’t sound bad.

“I’m sorry,” Seta said. “Satonaka-san has been assigned as my guide through the school.” 

“Satonaka’s going to be busy,” Yoko said. She didn’t want to think about Satonaka. It was a depressing truth of her stay at St Justine that everything Yoko did seemed to make Satonaka a little angrier. First came the eye-rolls, then came the snide put-downs, then came the kicks. Granted, Satonaka kicked everyone who pissed her off, but that wasn’t the point. “Amagi’s coming back onto the grounds this afternoon.”

“Oh?” 

“Yukiko Amagi. Sits in front of you. Long black hair. She and Satonaka are—” Lesbians. No, that wasn’t it. “—really close.” Like lesbians. Shit. Tae had done this on fucking purpose. “They’ve known each other since middle school or something. A lot of the girls here went to the middle school, too. Thought you could use some tips on how to get around from another transfer.” 

“Sure.” Seta had a nice smile, small and, weird as it was to say when it vanished so quickly, generous. She seemed nice in a way that filled Yoko with hope that Seta wouldn’t leave a dead mouse in her desk. “Let me talk with Chie-san.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Yoko said, bobbing her head up and down. She was tempted, for a second, to tell Seta that she shouldn’t tell Satonaka that she was going off with Yoko—but it was too late. Satonaka and Seta were chatting to one another. Satonaka even smiled—again! And there Yoko was, thinking that Satonaka only smiled for Amagi. Like—

This wasn’t even funny anymore.

Seta was back a short time later. “You were right,” she said. “Chie-san has to pick up Amagi-san from the bus stop in an hour.” 

“Great,” Yoko said. “Looks like you’re stuck with me, Seta-san.”

Seta’s smile flicked out again. Yoko felt herself smile back. 

 

*

 

St Justine’s School for Girls, sometimes referred to by jealous Inaba locals—Yoko hoped they were jealous, at least. It’d just be plain depressing if they actually had a point—as St Justine’s for the Wayward, was at the top of a hill. The campus wasn’t small, but it never felt big enough, either, especially with the big, iron fence that enclosed the school on all sides and straggly, bare trees that lined the campus paths. Two people had fallen to their deaths onto those spikes in the last four days. Yoko considered mentioning the murders or the accidents or whatever it had been. Deaths. Right. She considered mentioning the deaths, but that had seemed too morbid. She didn’t think Seta would have been disturbed by it or anything, but it was weird knowing that two people had died right on the grounds, and even weirder that nothing seemed to happen. There were police officers lurking around corners and eating lunch and dinner at the dinning hall, but after the first night, the novelty of trying to steal their guns had worn off. The first years still partied as hard as they had before the deaths. The girls of St Justine’s still hated her. Life as usual.

It took fifteen minutes to get from one end of the campus to another at a leisurely pace, ten minutes at a normal one, and maybe five if you ran. Yoko talked for almost the entire time. Seta rarely said much, but Yoko thought—she hoped—that Seta liked her. Seta smiled and nodded and, every now and then, looked as though she was thinking, really thinking, about something Yoko had said. Yoko said more and more and then she felt as though she had said to much, like she was bullshitting. But if Seta noticed or thought anything about it, it didn’t show on her face. The anklet, on occasion, clicked against Seta’s shoe. It didn’t seem to bother Seta, so Yoko pretended that it didn’t bother her, either.

“Are you boarding?” Yoko said.

“Yeah,” Seta said. “Most of the students here are, right?”

“We have a few day students from the town, but yeah, most of the people here board. I’m in room one-fourteen. You?” 

“Zero.”

“What?”

“That’s what my key says.” 

Yoko opened her mouth. Then she realized that anything she might say would be stating the obvious. She said it anyway. “There isn’t a room zero.”

“I know.”

There were two dorms. First years had the smaller, drafty dorms that had been built back during the school’s founding. The second- and third year dorms weren’t much better, but at least the windows closed all the way. Yoko had learned to count her blessings. 

Their dorm was made of brick. The floors were stark, polished wood. The rooms started with one hundred, and went up to one-thirty-six. There were two common areas. One of them even had a TV. Seta accepted the impromptu tour with good humor and even a laugh. But Yoko could tell by how Seta kept rubbing her wrist and staring up at the corner that she was worried. 

Finally, they went to the dorm prefect, Hanako. 

“Haha!” Hanako said. “That’s a lame joke. Try again with something better, losers.” She shut the door in their faces. Yoko was ready to knock again when she swung the door open again. She squinted at Seta, and then looked down at Seta’s anklet. “Let me see your key.” Seta had barely taken it out of her pocket when Hanako snatched it out of her hand. She shut the door again. A moment later, the door opened again. The flutist from 2-A opened her door. 

“What’s going on?” she said. Everyone ignored her. 

“What are you doing?” Yoko said. “Can’t you just do things without slamming doors all the time?” 

Hanako didn’t reply. She looked at the key in her palm, and then gave it back to Seta. “Come with me,” she said, and set off through the hall. She squeezed past the flutist. Seta and Yoko exchanged glances. Then they followed. 

The very end of the hall ended in an unmarked door that was always locked and, apparently, led to nowhere. Yoko had always assumed that it was full of cleaning supplies. But Hanako slipped the key into the lock and turned it and the door, with a creak, opened up. 

“Welcome to St Justine,” Hanako said. “Curfew’s at ten. Don’t do anything stupid and I won’t go after you.” She squinted at Seta. It looked like, for a moment, as though she wanted to say more. Then she turned and went back to her room. 

Room zero looked like all the other dorm rooms. A bit bigger, maybe, like it had been designed for a person and a half instead of just one. The walls weren’t brick, but off-color cinderblock. A suitcase and two boxes—Seta’s, most likely—were clustered together near the bed. There were bars in the narrow, long window. 

“Man, that’s overkill,” Yoko said. 

“Maybe,” Seta said. She sat on the bed, and gestured for Yoko to take a seat at the desk. Yoko did so, closing the door behind her. “Do you have a roommate?”

“All the rooms here are singles.”

“You can come visit me.”

“Yeah,” Yoko said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “You should probably come over to my room instead. This place is kind of creepy. Almost like a jail cell.”

Seta stretched out on the bed. Her back cracked as she did so. The one window looked out to a black-barked tree. A black crow sat on the branch, and opened its wings. Yoko looked back to Seta. 

“Can you take that thing off?” Yoko said.

“Not really.” Seta mimed sawing off her own foot, and Yoko laughed, weakly.

“I don’t really know how to ask this,” Yoko said. “But why are you… what did you do?” 

“Murder.”

“Get real.” 

“Maybe I am being real,” Seta said. She sat up, and her hair fell across her cheeks and over her eyes. “Maybe I followed some homeless guy into an alley and knifed him. Just like this.” Seta touched the yellow scarf beneath Yoko’s sailor collar. And Seta yanked Yoko off of the chair and onto the ground. Yoko skidded forward and oh, god, Seta was right on top of her and she was still the new girl, she’d always be the new girl and she’d never—someone had written on one of the cinderblocks “MY SOUL IS TRAPPED HERE” and Seta was going to kill her, oh, fuck. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen after the move, but none of this was supposed to happen, not Inaba, not leaving the city, not being stuck at this boarding school where everyone hated her and the fog sat in the trees every other day. Seta’s eyes, gray as her hair, rested on Yoko for a long, uncomfortable while. Yoko couldn’t breathe. 

“Do you mind if I kiss you?” Seta said.

“Oh, come on,” Yoko groaned. She put her foot against Seta’s hip, and pushed her away. “What the fuck?”

“I’m just asking.”

She got back on her feet and straightened her skirt. Her scarf had come undone, and she had spent all goddamn morning getting that thing fixed. Fuck. I’m not a dyke.”

“I am a murderer, though.” 

“That’s disgusting.” She tried to tie her scarf back on, but she couldn’t get it right. 

Seta, still on the floor, watched Yoko. Then she said, “When’s dinner?”

“Seven.” 

“Can you take me?” 

“Screw you,” Yoko said, and left. Her hands kept shaking. Fuck. She had told Seta her room number. Fuck. She didn’t think she’d mind it if Seta really had kissed her. Fuck.


	2. New Girls (2)

The fog had already rolled in by the time Chie found Yukiko in the shopping district. Her back was to the main road, but her kimono was a solid, red line in the gray. She was in front of the bookstore, going through the books outside. Chie jogged up to Yukiko, and grabbed onto her elbow. Yukiko hissed, as though Chie had pressed ice on the back of her neck. 

“What are you doing here?” Chie said. “You said that you’d wait for me at the bus stop.”

“I got here a bit early, that’s all,” Yukiko said. She slid her arm out of Chie’s grip. “You didn’t have to come. Adachi-san is waiting for me in the car over there.”

It was hard to see him through the fog. Chie squinted, and sure enough, there was Adachi’s car, a beige mid-nineties Korean coupe. His head lolled against the window, the glass mussing his dark hair even more.

“He’s going to get you killed,” Chie said.

“Don’t be silly, Chie.” 

“I mean it. He’s asleep.” Chie smoothed out Yukiko’s sleeve, ran her hand along the collar of the kimono. 

“It’s okay.” 

“Let me take you back. The bus will be here in ten minutes. We could take it up to St. Justine’s.” 

“Adachi-san has the car,” Yukiko said. But she followed Chie when Chie went to the bus stop. Was it always like this, Chie wondered, the two of them disagreeing over everything? She didn’t remember. She swore at one point things had been different, but that was before Saki and Yamano and everything. “He’ll worry when he sees I’m not there.”

“Well, he can just call you,” Chie said. She reached for Yukiko’s hand. There was a long moment where her hand dangled in the uncomfortable, damp air—and then their fingers touched. Chie turned her face away from Yukiko so she wouldn’t see the smile creeping, slowly onto her face. Yukiko’s fingers touched Chie’s hand, then her arm, then shoulder. Her lips pressed against Chie’s neck. Chie shivered, and then turned. All she saw was a rustling, black slash, vanishing into the mist. 

 

*

 

Seta didn’t push anything onto Yoko during dinner, which was good. If anything, Yoko was an impediment; half an hour into dinner, Seta got up and ate with Kujikawa and her groupies. Yoko picked at her rice and tried to not run around shouting, “Get away, Seta’s going to rape you!” because no one would believe her. Anyway, Kujikawa probably wouldn’t mind it. Kujikawa was known for being a slut. Not that Yoko cared.

The table where Amagi and Satonaka usually sat at was empty. Yoko, maybe out of plain masochism, watched it. No one dared to get near it. Satonaka and Amagi normally got to the dining hall early and stayed there until it closed. Amagi always brought books, and Satonaka normally ate and then roamed, normally settling in with the other sports girls. If she was mad, then she’d take the person out to the back of the cafeteria near the dumpsters and let them know it. She didn’t understand why she kept looking for them. It wasn’t like she _enjoyed_ having Satonaka punching her every time Yoko said that steak was going to make her fat.

Seta returned to Yoko’s little table. She looked from Amagi and Satonaka’s empty spot, to Yoko, and then back again. “They’re not back yet?”

“What?” 

“Amagi-san and Chie-san. Rise-chan says that they’re normally there. Rise-chan’s throwing a party. She’s invited me.” Seta put her hand on Yoko’s arm. Yoko refused to flinch. Seta’s mouth curved up. “I’m inviting you.” 

“Dude, I don’t do parties,” Yoko said.

“I think it’ll be nice. She says she’s throwing a special new kids party for Shirogane-san.” 

As though on cue, Shirogane walked into the dining hall. She looked far manlier in a skirt than she looked in the pants she wore around town. That was Yoko’s thought, anyway. 

“And I said that you looked pretty new, too, and she said yes.”

“How are you on a first name basis with everyone already?” Yoko said. 

“It’s an art,” Seta said. Yoko could believe it. Seta’s hand was still on her arm. Yoko tucked her arm against her ribs. “I put people at ease. Make them happy.” 

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s true. Not with you, though. I mean everything I say with you.” 

Seta’s eyes, gray and sharp, bit into Yoko. It hurt. Yoko looked away. “Stop it.”

Seta hummed a bit, and pulled back, wrapping her arm around the back of the chair she sat in. Seta’s fox face never looked gentle, even when it was at rest. Constantly moving, observing, recording. Yoko realized, with a sick lurch of her stomach, that she wanted Seta to pay attention to her, that she wanted Seta’s attention. She just didn’t want the rest of it. 

“Come with me,” said Seta. 

And Yoko said, “Okay.”

 

*

 

Kujikawa had been an idol back in the day, and was taking a short break to “focus on her education.” Everyone knew, though, that Kujikawa was on time out after being caught in that big party at the underground Osaka punk scene. Bad enough, they said, to be caught in the underground when you were a hotshot, upcoming idol. Worse to be caught by the tabloids without letting your manager know. 

Seta took Yoko back to the dorms—how quickly their positions had been reversed—and they changed into more suitable outfits. Yoko didn’t want to talk to Kujikawa. Kujikawa was perky and bright and wasn’t the kind of girl who got along with girls like Yoko. Yoko chose her usual out-to-town outfit. But instead of her usual converses, she pulled on a pair of boots that make her calves feel fat, even though Tae once said that she had chicken legs. She tried combing her hair, but it wouldn’t stay flat. When Seta knocked on her door, Yoko expected Seta to laugh; but instead Seta shifted her weight onto one leg and looked Yoko over in a way that made her back stiffen, as though someone was scratching her spine. 

“Nice,” Seta said. Seta’s clothes were nothing special: a gray vest worn over a lighter gray scoop-neck. Black jeans. Flats. But she wore makeup: white eyeshadow, deep, dark mascara, blush and lipstick and lip gloss and lip everything. Yoko felt, suddenly, under-dressed. “I like the way your legs look in those boots. It’s sexy.” 

The way Seta’s eyes were working Yoko was definitely, definitely indecent. It was probably pornographic. Yoko reminded herself that this was only happening because she didn’t have any real friends and because Seta was a desperate lesbian. 

“Whatever,” Yoko said. She tucked her keys into her pocket. “Let’s go, I guess.”

Kujikawa’s room was on the second floor. Seta knocked, four times, and then let her hand fall. Even through the door, Yoko could hear the thumps and beats. When the door opened, the music got louder, but was still muddy and thick. Kujikawa, her hair loose, greeted Seta with an enthusiastic hug. As for Yoko, Kujikawa smiled and said, “Come on in! What’s your name?”

“Hanamura,” Yoko said, just as Seta said, “Yoko.” 

“Yoko-senpai,” Kujikawa said. “Yeah, I thought your name was something like that.” She waved at Yoko to sit on a beanbag chair. Seta leaned against Yoko. Her hair was smooth and soft. Shirogane was on the other beanbag chair, holding onto her cup with a rigid, sour expression. Her hat was flat on her stomach; somehow, seeing her face only made her annoyance with the situation, with the world in general, more obvious. 

Kujikawa sat on the bed, which had messy, unmade sheets. The lights were off, except for the lamp on Kujikawa’s desk. Three bottles of wine, one red and two white, glinted wet with alcohol on the rim. No one else was there.

“Australian?” Seta said, nodding at the Merlot. 

“I think so,” Kujikawa said. “Help yourself. We new girls have to stick together.”

“Are we the only ones here?” Yoko said.

“Yeah,” Kujikawa said. “I didn’t invite anyone else. But you should totally come over to the other parties, too, Yoko-senpai.” The bottle of Zinfandel was already half-empty. Judging by how Shirogane hadn’t moved, Kujikawa had been the one responsible for putting it away. “So Sumi-senpai just transferred today?” 

“Yeah,” said Seta. “You?”

“I got here… two months ago? Right after summer vacation.” Kujikawa waved her plastic cup over at Shirogane, whose expression soured even further. “Naoto-kun got here a few weeks after me. She spends all her time with the police department.”

“Everyone used to think Naoto-kun was a boy,” Yoko said, just so she’d have something to say. Seta handed her a cup of Merlot. “We all called her the ‘Detective Prince.’”

“I never said that I _wasn’t_ female,” Shirogane said. Her eyes rested on Seta’s ankle, but she said nothing of it, just drank more. 

“You liked everyone thinking you were a guy, huh?” Yoko said. Shirogane gave Yoko a look that should have been withering, but they never talked, and Shirogane was a year below her, anyway. It didn’t matter, she told herself, if she hurt Shirogane’s feelings. Tomorrow she could go to Shirogane and apologize and blame it on the alcohol. 

“My uncle is Dojima-san,” Seta said. “Are you on any investigations, or are you just here to learn?”

“I am merely here to supplement my education while being in proximity to the police to act as an occasional help,” Shirogane said. 

Seta refilled Yoko’s cup, and then her own. “Sounds interesting.”

“Although,” Shirogane said, “recent happenings on campus certainly have created new avenues to which I can apply myself.”

“Wow,” Kujikawa said. “Your grammar is perfect, even after all this.”

“Loser,” Yoko said. Seta reached behind her, and pinched her side. Maybe it was just the alcohol, but her heart beat a little harder. 

Shirogane didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes flicked down to Seta’s ankle again; her expression became drawn, as though she was thinking. Kujikawa, too, took notice of it. Her eyes widened. 

“Oh!” Kujikawa said. “Not that it’s a bad thing or anything! We have one or two other students—but I didn’t think you of all people would have one. What did you do?” 

And there it was, that question that had ended with Yoko’s back on the floor and Seta asking for a kiss. Yoko felt her stomach get tight. She held her breath. Then she chugged and refilled.

Seta gave her familiar—weird, they had only known each other for a day, but it was already familiar—consciously nonthreatening smile. “Murder.”

Kujikawa laughed like it was a big joke. Yoko, weakly, tried to join her. But Shirogane crossed her legs and arms and straightened up on the beanbag. “It is no laughing matter,” Shirogane said. “Murder is a serious crime.” 

“It’s not like she set a building on fire or anything,” Kujikawa said. “You’re so pretty, senpai.” Kujikawa reached over and stroked Seta’s hair. Seta bent down so Kujikawa could muss it better. Kujikawa was still giggling, but the longer she pet Seta’s hair, the fainter the giggles became until they trailed off altogether. The pets slowed. Yoko smoothed everything back when Kujikawa withdrew. “Was it really murder?”

“Yeah,” Seta said, just as Shirogane grunted and said, “Not in the eyes of the court of law.” 

“How would you know?” Yoko said. “You’re not even with the police. You’re just some _girl_ they don’t even like.”

Someone knocked on the door. Shirogane stood.

“Don’t go,” Seta said. She pressed her fingers into Yoko’s spine.

“I was on my way out,” Shirogane said. She stood on her tiptoes and peered through the eye-hole. She turned back to Kujikawa and said, “It’s the prefect.” 

“Damn,” Kujikawa said, and put away the bottles. She looked at the cups, as though to set them aside, but then drank more and said, “Well, it’s not like Ayane-chan is going to stop us.” 

Shirogane opened the door. Ayane stepped in. 

“Um,” she said. “I’m sorry for intruding, but have any of you seen Amagi-senpai? Ohtani-senpai says Satonaka-senpai can’t find her.” 

“It’s just been the four of us,” Kujikawa said. “Sorry, Ayane-chan.”

“Okay,” Ayane said. She stepped right out again. Shirogane followed, shutting the door behind her. Kujikawa went to Shirogane’s seat, and then pouted in it. 

“We should go, too,” Seta said. Refill our cups?” 

“Oh, senpai,” Kujikawa said, and kissed her cheek. “I’ll give you some of the one I don’t like.” 

“I can’t help it. You’re cute.”

“Shut up,” Yoko said. She didn’t know why she said it. It just flew out of her mouth. She didn’t want to take it back, though. Seta gave Yoko another cup of wine. Shit, how was she going to finish all of this? She took a sniff, and then drank. Seta helped steady Yoko as she stood. 

“Good night, Rise-chan,” Seta said. Yoko didn’t remember the door closing or walking through the halls, but she did remember the suddenness of the cool night, the air crisp with the promise of frost. She shivered. Seta’s arms were wrapped around her torso. This was weird. She should have just gone back to her room and skipped dinner, but here she was with a girl who kept saying she was a murderer and who maybe liked her. But Seta wasn’t doing anything to her. That was good, at least. 

The first year dorms and the upperclassmen dorms were about five minutes from each other, but the fog that had arrived in the afternoon hadn’t left yet. Yoko had been at St. Justine for almost six months now, but right now she didn’t think she would’ve been able to point a way out if she tried.

“Which way should we go?” Seta said. 

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I’m new around here, remember?”

“Left, then.” 

The trees got thicker and the fog became denser. They were going the wrong way. They were standing in front of the church now. It had been built in the Western style, with a steeple and a bell tower. Through the fog, Yoko couldn’t see the top of the tower. That was the place where Konishi and Yamano had tumbled to their deaths. 

“Two people died here,” Yoko said. Shit. Stupid mouth. She meant that to be a signal to leave, but Seta pushed the doors open, so Yoko followed. Inside it was quiet and dark. Yoko didn’t know they left the church open this late; she half-expected to see someone praying. But no one was. A statue of St Justine, imported from Italy or France, stood in an alcove. Across from her was the Virgin Mary. At the front of the church, Jesus’ wooden eyes were cast, blindly, onto the candles below. Seta looked up at St Justine, and then clasped her hands together.

“Come on,” Yoko said. “No way you’re really Catholic.”

“You never know who you might need to call on for help,” Seta said. “You should try to befriend everyone you come across.”

“Why?”

Seta looked up at St Justine. Then she went to the Virgin Mary and prayed again. The pews of the church were empty, and the moon, faintly, glowed through the clouds. Yoko half-expected one of the nuns to drift in and yell at them, but it seemed as though it was just the two of them. Seta stood. She was a tall girl. And the candles and makeup softened her features just enough to make her look gentle. In the darkness, she looked romantic; like she belonged to the night or the church or maybe was like those statues. The anklet blinked red and green. 

“Hey,” Yoko said. “How do you shower in that?” And then Seta was kissing her, their mouths connecting—Yoko held onto Seta’s upper arms, let Seta brush her hair from her face, let Seta’s hand settle, in a really, really gay way, on her jaw. Yoko blinked, and they were apart. Seta went up to the altar, and knelt down. Yoko followed, using the pews for balance. 

“Hey,” she said. “Hey, what?” 

“You wanted it. I could see it.” 

“Dude, that’s like date rape.”

“I’m not lying. I really did see it.” 

Yoko felt her face heat up. Every part of her was flushed. Even her fingertips looked pink. “Stop it.” 

“It’s true,” Seta said, and this time when she reached up for Yoko, Yoko went down willingly. She tasted like wine, sweet, yet burning with the hot fires of alcohol and temper. Yoko sought Seta further and further, grabbed onto Seta’s shirt, slid her hand beneath the scoop of her collar. Yoko felt Seta’s fingers dig into her hipbone, and Seta’s mouth near her ear. “It was a man,” Seta said. “Her husband. She miscarried. He was leaving her. He was going to take everything. So I did it for her.” 

Yoko stopped. 

“I’m not saying,” Seta said, “that I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. But she asked me.” 

The candles seemed to blaze bright. Yoko pulled away. 

“I have to go outside,” she said, and left Seta there before the altar. She opened the church doors and vomited on the grass. She couldn’t make herself move. She didn’t know if she wanted to. It was all because she was drunk, she knew. They both were. Tomorrow they’d wake up and it’d be the wine’s fault. She felt better. She stood up, and as her knees straightened, the bells tolled. 

Yoko blinked, unsure of what had just happened. Seta appeared a second later. 

“Did you do that?” Yoko said. 

“No,” she said. 

“Let’s go back to the dorms.”

They were barely ten seconds out when Satonaka came jogging down the path. Her uniform was soaked with sweat, even though it was cold. She had tied her green tracksuit around her waist. 

“Have you two seen Yukiko?” she said. 

“No,” Seta said. 

“What about that police officer?” she said. “Adachi-san.”

“What are you talking about?” Yoko said. “Geeze.”

Satonaka peered into Yoko’s eyes. Then she said, “Oh my god, are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you?” She smacked Yoko on the back of the head. “You idiot, what were you thinking? Someone could’ve caught you!”

“Shut up, you dyke,” Yoko said. 

Satonaka kicked Yoko so hard that she fell to the ground. While Yoko was holding onto her stomach and trying to keep herself from vomiting again, Seta and Satonaka had doubled back a short way, and then came back with Amagi. The bells were ringing, still, at the church. 

“What happened?” Satonaka was saying. “You left with Adachi-san, didn’t you? Yukiko?” 

“We need to go,” Amagi said. “Let’s run away, Chie, you promised—we have to go—”

“What? No, come on…” Satonaka rubbed small circles into Amagi’s lower back. Seta watched the pair with an expression Yoko couldn’t read, then shook her head. “Were you at the church? Yukiko?” 

Seta put her hand on Yoko’s back, and helped her up. “I want to go back to your room,” Seta said. 

Yoko let her eyes linger on Satonaka and Amagi a little longer. Then she turned her head away. “Yeah.” 

Seta’s hands were a little warm, despite the cold. Satonaka was going to the church. Amagi stood there, her black hair tumbling over her red sweater. Even though it was night and the fog blanketed the ground and the trees, Yoko could still see Amagi no matter how far she walked. The sweater had been the red of blood.


	3. The Departed

“Dead dog,” Ai said, putting a ten thousand yen bill onto the table. Around them, their classmates chattered and ate. Ai had left her own salad half-eaten. Kozue was eating sushi. Salmon roe had been sprinkled on the top.

“No way,” said Kozue. “She’s run away and gotten married.” Two ten thousand bills. 

“Oh, please,” Ai said. “A pretty girl like Amagi with nothing to lose? The only way she’s leaving is if someone makes her. Her grandfather’s dead.” Thirty thousand. 

“Her grandpa is _not_ dead. I’m telling you, she’s always wanted to run.” Fifty thousand.

“Her grandmother’s dead.” Sixty thousand.

“Would you stop killing old people with your imagination?” Kozue said. “No wonder you can’t get a date even though you’re so pretty.” 

“You only wish you could accessorize like me.”

Tae returned to the classroom. Sweat matting her hair, and she had thrown a towel around her shoulders. She looked down at the desk. “What are you betting on now?”

“Amagi-san,” Kozue said. ““Where have you been?”

“Took the girls out for a run,” Tae said. “Heard from new girl that Satonaka isn’t in class, either.”

Tae, Kozue, and Ai all shook their heads. Wherever Amagi went, Satonaka was sure to follow. It had been true since middle school, and the longer their friendship went, the more true it became, until they were two lonely islands, floating farther and farther away from the rest of them. 

“Wonder where they went,” Tae said. 

Ai put down a five thousand yen bill. “Hell.” 

“They’ve run off to America to get married,” Kozue said. Ten thousand yen. 

“Well… you know what they say about marriage.”

“I think it could be nice,” Kozue said. She looked, for a moment, over to Tae. “Maybe.” 

Tae looked down at the money, and clicked her tongue. “What happened to that Seta betting pool? Anyone found out what she did?”

“New girl says murder,” Kozue said. 

“I bet it’s grand theft,” Ai said. 

Tae filched a leaf of lettuce from Ai’s salad. She made a face. “God, I want to hit Aiya’s later.”

“How fat do you think I want to be?” 

“I’ll go with you,” Kozue said. “I’m dying for some fried gyoza.” 

“Fat,” sniffed Ai. 

“Join the soccer club and maybe things will change,” Tae said.

Ai took a look at Tae’s short hair, her tracksuit, the bandage across her nose. “I’ll pass. I’m going out to town. Laters.”

“Can you get Seta for me on your way out?” Kozue said. “I want to talk to her.”

“No way,” Ai said. “Do I look like your errand runner?” She blew a kiss at Kozue, who wrinkled her nose and looked away. Then, with a swish of her hips, she left. 

“Is she skipping again?” Tae said. 

“Ai-san skips all the time.” Kozue collected the money and pocketed it. “Have you ever been out with Ai-san on one of her trips?” 

“No way,” Tae said. “I’d end up killing her. Do you know how long it takes for her to change into a freaking dress?” 

The bell rang. Kozue pushed the rest of her sushi to Tae. Ten minutes into modern literature, Kozue spotted Ai leaving campus with the new girl and Seta. 

 

*

 

It had rained in the morning, but by the time the three of them left, the only sign of rain was the darker, damp bark on the trees and the occasional puddle. Yoko was glad for the winter coats. Ebihara, of course, had replaced hers with a fashionable sable knee-length knit cardigan. Seta hadn’t had much time to make the tweaks and modifications to her uniform that the other students did, but she seemed so… serious. Or some other big, fancy word that only ever had to be used on a test. Austere, Yoko decided. Seta looked austere. Severe. Serious. Something like that. 

Seta and Ebihara had pulled ahead. They were talking comfortably. Sometimes they would laugh. 

Yoko followed just behind them, watching the contrast and the similarities of the two girls in front of her: Ebihara’s long, blonde hair and Seta’s shorter, city-girl cut; Ai’s thin, clear lines and Seta’s more defined, sharper ones; the amiability of the two, as though they had been friends for a long time. Once or twice, Seta and Yoko made eye contact. And once or twice, Yoko looked away. 

They didn’t go back to school for the afternoon classes. Seta carried Ebihara’s bags, looking both gallant and put upon. Yoko, despite her protests, wound up lugging two bags of shoes and boots. 

‘Bitch,’ she thought, rather ungenerously. They continued to roam around, Ebihara buying more and more and Seta and Yoko growing correspondingly more burdened, though Seta cheerily continued to go ahead and chat with Ebihara, entertain Ebihara while she changed in and out of her clothes, while she went past the salesbin and straight to the displays and the highracks, while she talked about the boys she’d like to dress up or dress down—not really, but Yoko could hear it, and felt like shouting a warning, “Hey, look, Seta isn’t into that kind of stuff.” But she said nothing and let herself be used. Better to be the butt of one person, she figured, than to be the butt of her entire freaking grade. And anyway, she didn’t want to be in school. She didn’t want to be here, either, but now there was no way out. If she tried to escape now, Ai would probably sue her out of Japan. 

They stopped, finally, at dinner. Ebihara called a cab and piled all her bags in. 

“I can send another one for you, too,” she added a moment later, once it became clear that she had bought too much. 

“That’s all right,” Seta said, an affable smile on her face. “Yoko-san and I can stay out here for a while longer.”

“Are you sure?” Ebihara said. Her eyes flicked down to Seta’s ankle. “Aren’t you on a really strict curfew or something?” 

“Well, that’s a matter left to debate,” Seta said. 

“You’re a strange one,” Ebihara said, and laughed. She shut the door. The yellow taxi cab sped up the hill leading to St. Justine. Yoko watched it go up without comment. Her hands were cold; and as though sensing that, Seta took her hand and tucked it into her pocket.

“What are you doing?” Yoko said. 

“Why not?” Seta said. 

“It looks stupid.” She pulled her scarf closer to her neck, and breathed into it. She took her hand back. Seta chased it; their fingers tangled into one another, clumsily, before separating. 

“Are you mad about last night?” Seta said. 

“Whatever.” 

“I’ve told you before, that I’ve kill—”

“Shut up, okay?” Yoko said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She didn’t want to turn to look at Seta, but she did, anyway. It was hard to tell if Seta was upset or not. But there was something vacant and airy about her smile that made her sigh. “I’ve had a bad day. I don’t want to talk.”

“I didn’t have such a bad day.”

“Yeah, I know.” Yoko buried her nose into the scarf, and mumbled into the collar of her coat, so quietly she wasn’t sure if Seta heard her, “I’m going to a cafe in town. You can follow me, I guess. If you want.”

She stepped forward, and Seta followed. She took another step forward, and Seta walked with her. Not in front or next to, but a little bit behind. It was comfortable like this. Yoko realized that she could come to adapt to Seta and her strangeness and quirks; but no way she was going to make out with that crazy girl ever again. Fuck. Yoko knew she wasn’t gay, and Seta—Seta was a player. And a creep. And so, so _weird_. 

She got so comfortable with Seta following her that she didn’t know when she had lost Seta. But once she did, she turned back and ran, snow and ice be damned, the way she came until she found Seta two blocks behind, sitting on a fire hydrant and reading the newspaper. 

“What were you doing?” Yoko said. 

“Look at this,” Seta said. 

_Police officer found dead in St. Justine Bell Tower; Investigation Underway._

“Give me that,” Yoko said. She snatched the article from Seta, and shivered. Her hands had become cold again. She tucked the paper into her armpit. “Come on, let’s get to somewhere warm.” 

“Why didn’t anyone say anything?” Seta said. “No one mentioned it at all.” 

“Yeah, well, maybe we’re all used to dead bodies around here.”

“The bells were ringing last night.” 

Yoko thought back to last night. She shook her head. “Come on, let’s talk about this somewhere else,” Yoko said. When Seta didn’t look as though she was planning on moving, Yoko said, “For shit’s sake, we’re can’t stand and talk about murders where someone might see us. I’m cold.” 

“What difference does it make?” 

“Shut up.” 

Seta shrugged, and followed Yoko into the cafe without a word. It was right at the end of the school day. Most of the students at the local schools were still on their way into the town center, and the girls at St. Justine would be even longer than the others—that was why Yoko was surprised to see Amagi and Satonaka in the cafe, too, both bundled up. Their suitcases were pushed against the wall of the cozy—run-down, really, but who cared?—cafe. Amagi’s coat was a deep gray with violent red panels, like interjections or the simmerings of a sudden storm, while Satonaka wore her usual green jacket. They were both out of uniform. 

“Huh,” Satonaka said, looking at the two of them. Yoko, for a moment, only gawked. “You guys are skipping?” 

“You skip all the time,” Yoko said. 

“That’s different,” Satonaka said. “Yukiko has to go back home every now and then to help take care of the Inn. Right, Yukiko?” 

Amagi stirred her coffee and said nothing. Seta nodded to both Amagi and Satonaka, and slid into a seat at the table next to them. The carpet looked moldy. It seemed to spell “HELP ME.” Yoko tossed the newspaper over the little sign, and smiled, tightly, at the two girls. The weird thing was, they looked so calm and unafraid—or maybe they just looked tired. 

“It’s my fault,” Seta said. “Ai-san from the class next door invited me, and I took Yoko-san along.” 

“Yeah, that so?” Satonaka said. She leaned back in her chair, and looked down at the floor. Yoko tried to put her foot over the newspaper, but Satonaka must have seen it anyway, because she pushed her sandwich plate away from her and sighed. She rested her chin on her hand and said, “Well, what can you do about it.”

There was a long, quiet moment. Yoko had never seen Satonaka like this before; so careless, but with so much on the line. 

“Do you know what happened?” Yoko said. 

“Not a clue,” Satonaka said. “It must’ve happened after we met you two. Who knows.” 

“We’re running away,” Amagi said. “I asked Chie, and she said that we’ll run away.” 

There was another one of those moments, where Yoko felt something in her tremor. The same feeling she got on a strong, gusty day, when she looked up at the sky and realized that there was nothing up there, not really, just water and air and then a whole lot of space. But those moments always passed when she looked away. It didn’t this time.

“The two of you must be close,” Seta said, gently. “I don’t think I’d do that for anyone. Maybe Yoko.”

“Stop that,” Yoko said. “Geeze…” 

“I never wanted to be in this town anyway,” Amagi said, and that feeling fell through Yoko so fast that she swore that her heart twisted. “I’ve always wanted to leave. I always knew that Chie would be my prince.” She stared out the window out at the setting sun. Then she went quiet again. 

“You probably don’t know this,” Yoko said to Seta, “but Amagi’s family’s in the business.”

Seta’s brow furrowed. “Prostitution?” 

“What?” Satonaka said. “What are you two talking about?” 

“Nothing!” Yoko said. “Sheesh. What’s up with you, Miss Defensive?” 

“You two are the worst,” Satonaka said. “We’re just going on a little trip, that’s all. I mean, it’s always exciting going on these long distance things, but we have to come back eventually, I guess. Somehow.” 

There was the obvious question to ask, and then the smart one. Yoko knew—she _knew_ , because this was what she always did—that if she opened her mouth, the dumb thing would end up falling out of it. But she couldn’t stop herself, either. “So wait, which one of you killed him?” 

“Shut up, Yoko,” Satonaka said. “No one killed anyone.” She stirred Amagi’s coffee for her. “Didn’t they teach you any manners in the city, or do you just go around going, ‘Hey, what did you do today, kill someone?’” 

“Not my fault people in this shitty town keep dying,” Yoko said. “You’re the one who’s acting all suspicious, too. It’s your fault that I’m asking these questions to begin with.”

“I always think the more interesting question isn’t the ‘who’ or ‘what,’ but the ‘why,’” Seta said. The conversation paused there; the waitress had arrived. Yoko and Seta put in their orders. Amagi continued to look out the window. Satonaka clanged the silverware around, stirring one thing or another. When Yoko’s coffee and Seta’s soda arrived, Seta said, “I heard some interesting stories while I was in the station. Would you like to hear them?” 

Satonaka and Yoko glowered at one another. “It’ll be better than listening to Yoko run her mouth.”

Yoko was about to snap something back, but Seta took her hand and squeezed it. “There was this man I met,” Seta said. “Who murdered another man—five gunshots to the chest. And he didn’t know why. He led me through his entire story: his mother died, and then he met this girl, and then he met a man who asked him to write these letters—and then they were on a beach somewhere, and the man gave him a gun. And he aimed and shot five times. Said the sun was in his eyes. That was the only thing. Nothing more. Or maybe something more. And then he went to jail and stayed there and was hanged some time later.” 

They waited. 

“That’s it,” Seta said. 

“What?” Satonaka said. “That’s boring. You city kids sure have weird stories.”

“ _L’Étranger,_ ” said Amagi. “That’s Camus.”

She was still staring out the window, but at least this made her a little less creepy. Maybe. 

“Caught red-handed,” Seta said, only a little rueful. 

“Why would you have met a man in jail, anyway?” Yoko said. “They’re split by gender, right?” 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Satonaka said. “You’d think you’d have a reason for killing someone. Like, maybe they killed your dog. Or hit your Mom. Or maybe they’re just, like, evil or something and have to be taken down.” 

“Or maybe they just piss you off,” Yoko said. 

Amagi looked over at Seta. They didn’t look much alike, but there seemed to be some kind of resonance—the resonance of two separate glasses of different shapes and sizes, struck by some small object, and vibrating at the same frequency. Then she said, “What would you say is a good reason to kill someone?” 

“Love is the most honorable,” Seta said. “Anything else can be justified. But only love can be respected.” 

“I didn’t take you for a romantic, Seta-san,” Amagi said. 

“It happens.” 

“As for me,” Amagi said, quiet and breathy, in one big rush that felt like if it didn’t get out, it’d never get out, and once it was out, it’d never come back in, “I find it’s too irrational, Seta-san. Doing anything for love—you won’t know what you’re doing, and when you wake up, you’ll regret it. But honor won’t lead you astray.” 

“I knew the two of you would hit off,” Satonaka said brightly, then winced. “Although, I wish you two would pick something else to talk about. Isn’t this a little bleak?” 

“I’d say that you’re a romantic, too, Amagi-san,” Seta said. 

Amagi turned back to the window. She looked out to the west, and sighed, and it was like that moment Yoko had seen on television sometimes, when a wind blew and all the pages in a book just lift straight up and flip through the story, all at once. “Not,” she said, “because I want to be.” 

Satonaka bit into the last of her sandwich, and then stood up. “Our train’s coming in soon,” Satonaka said. “We have a long way to go. Yukiko here wants to go to Europe.”

“Geeze,” Yoko said. 

“If you ever need help,” Seta said. 

“No,” Amagi said. “I don’t think so.” 

When the two of them left, there was an eerie light coming into the cafe. They said their goodbyes, and then they were gone. Yoko blinked a few times, and it was as though it had never happened. Seta toyed with the napkins on the table. Then she said, “Do you want to go somewhere?” 

“Like where?” Yoko said, suspicious. 

“I don’t know. Back to St. Justine’s, I think. I should go before they send someone for me.” Seta ran her hand through her hair, and that light seemed to go straight through Seta and hit Yoko right where she sat, and stayed there. What had happened? She didn’t know. All she knew was that there was that light and it was in her and she knew it would never leave. They took the bus up to St. Justine, and Seta followed Yoko back to the dorms. There seemed to be more people talking around them than usual, talking about the latest murders, how it was that nice policeman, Adachi, the disappearance of Satonaka and Amagi, but they didn’t matter. Yoko took Seta back to room zero, and stood at the door. Seta opened it, but didn’t enter.

“Are you going to come in?” Seta said. 

“Yeah,” Yoko said. “Sure.” 

She stepped through, took off her shoes, and sat on the bed.

“I guess,” Yoko said, “I don’t get it. I mean, really don’t get it.” 

“Right,” Seta said. 

“Because I don’t even—they were always in their own little world. And did you hear what Amagi said? Prince? Seriously? And then all that stuff about honor. Who does she think she is, ugh. I don’t even get it.” 

“I do,” Seta said. 

“Yeah, I bet you do,” Yoko muttered. 

“I’d do it twice,” Seta said. “If it was for you.” 

Yoko curled into the covers. She undid the buttons of her coat, letting them pop with a satisfying noise. Seta dragged her desk chair close to the bed. Then once Yoko had gotten her coat off, Seta took it and folded it, carefully, and put it on her desk. Then Seta undid her own coat, and let it drop to the ground. And it was—it was sexy, Yoko didn’t know why she thought that, but she did. It was sexy and Seta’s weird, mysterious fox face was getting close and there she went, making out with crazy, possibly sociopathic murderers again. 

“Wait a second,” Yoko said as Seta’s hand slid beneath her shirt. It was cold. Everything about this room was cold. Shit, she couldn’t stop staring at the little graffiti on the cinderblocks—

“Hmm?” Seta said. 

“I don’t…” Yoko swallowed. “I don’t want it to hurt.” 

“It won’t,” Seta promised. And it didn’t. Not until later.


	4. The Ones Who Stay

_november._

 

“Did you hear?” said Ai as she passed Tae and Kozue on their morning jog around the school. Tae scowled, but cut her speed. Kozue jogged on ahead, then stopped, hands on her knees and breathing hard. It was autumn, cruel and cold. All the leaves had fallen off. White frost clung to the windows, and a chill seeped beneath the doors and swept across the classrooms. They had started lighting the dorms’ fireplaces in the evenings. Hanako Ohtani could be found seated in the chair closest to the flames, her beady eyes watching the people who walked past, but never in. 

“What did I hear?” Tae said. 

Ai looked Tae up and down. “You should invest in a better bra, shouldn’t you? I’ll buy you one. My treat. No one wants to see you falling out of your shirt.”

“It’s a matter of preference, isn’t it? I think they’re fine,” Kozue said. “You’re talking about the Amagi rumor, aren’t you?” 

Tae glanced down at her breasts. Then she said, “I thought Amagi was dead.”

“Nope,” Ai said. “Who cares about the Amagis, anyway? It’s not like they did anything good for the town.” 

Tae looked thoughtful. “Haven’t there been more of the Amagi people running around town lately?” 

It was easy to spot them. Many of them wore traditional clothing during the year, and as for those who didn’t, they often wore red accents or accessories. They were, truth be told, unsubtly menacing. Red was the color of danger and of blood, and it stuck to them even as they cleaned the riverbanks or sat at Aiya’s to watch a game of baseball. There was business, see. And then there was _business_. 

“So?” Kozue said.

“Means that some of them are back, doesn’t it?” Tae said. “A girl on the team said that she saw the Tatsumis welcome someone into their house late at night.”

“That’s probably just their usual nightly shipment,” Kozue said. 

“Of what, crack?” Ai said. 

“Don’t let Kana-chan hear that,” Kozue said. “The Tatsumis aren’t that kind of family, anyway.” 

“They are,” Ai said. “Haven’t you seen their daughter? Total enforcer type. She only _looks_ cute.” 

“Has anyone heard about Satonaka?” Tae said. “I miss her.” 

“She went with Amagi, didn’t she?” Kozue said. 

“If I were her, I’d dump Amagi,” Ai said. “High maintenance bitches are the worst.”

“Ha!” said Kozue. But she checked her nails, discreetly. The paint had chipped. 

“I heard that she tried to follow Amagi, but couldn’t,” Tae said. “She stayed at the last second.”

Of course, if that were true, then where was Satonaka now? They looked at one another. It was fun listening and creating rumors. But they knew—maybe they were too cynical to not know, maybe it was one of those things that was impossible to not know—that none of it was true; that it was just something to hold onto until the truth came to light. 

“Maybe they really did run away together,” Kozue said. “Maybe they’re happy somewhere.”

“You’re a sap,” Tae muttered. 

But it almost seemed likely, didn’t it? —For a moment, they all looked up at the sky, contemplating this. Then they shook their heads. Two high school girls making it out in the world by themselves, one of them a gangster and the other her pet dog? No. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair if those two got to be happy after making so much trouble for everyone else. 

“We should talk to new girl,” Ai said. “Go talk to new girl.”

“New girl’s sleeping with Seta,” Tae said. 

“Everyone’s sleeping with Seta,” Ai said. “That slut.” 

“You say that about everyone,” Kozue said. “Seta knows everything.”

“Seta has eyes in all places,” said Tae.

“Seta’s probably watching us right now,” said Ai. “Eavesdropping whore.”

“I heard she has contacts in the underground.”

“I heard she has contacts everywhere in Japan.”

“I heard her last girlfriend was married to a famous yakuza leader.”

“Seta’s girlfriend had Seta murder a yakuza boss, and that Seta _was_ a boss.” 

They all looked at one another—not wholly sure who said what, only that it was funny and maybe just a tiny bit true. Ai dropped her cigarette onto the ground, and ground it with her heel. 

“Come, join us,” said Kozue. 

“Maybe some other time,” Ai said, airily. “I have to go home for something.” She blew a sardonic kiss over at Tae, and then strutted down to the main gates. Kozue and Tae watched her leave, then shrugged at each other, and continued their workout.

 

*

 

There were two great tragedies in Kana Tatsumi’s life: the death of her father when she was young, and the far more depressing state of being designated Rise Kujikawa’s drinking buddy. The worst part was that her mother liked Kujikawa way more than any mother ought to—what a wholesome, fresh girl, her Ma had said, and if Kujikawa was ‘wholesome’ or ‘fresh’ then Kana was like, a million meters tall and could shoot lightning out of her nostrils. But her Ma was always worried that Kana didn’t have enough friends, and every now and then, Kana found herself ungraciously booted from her house and forced to stay on campus.

It was Saturday night, and for Kana, this meant another weekend spent holding Kujikawa’s hair out of her face while she vomited into a toilet. Shirogane used to keep Kujikawa and Kana company, but then Shirogane started hanging out with Seta instead. Not that Kana blamed her for it; Shirogane was too smart to spend time doing this kind of shit. But it wasn’t like Kana could just leave Kujikawa, either. Someone had to hold her head back and make sure she din’t choke in the middle of the night. 

“You done yet?” Kana said when Kujikawa gave up on vomiting to collapse on the bathroom tiles. 

Kujikawa nodded her head, and then stretched her arms towards Kana. “Come oooon, Kana-chan,” she said. “Lie down with me.” 

“Hell no,” Kana said. “Ain’t doing that girly stuff.” 

“But you are a girl, aren’t you?” Kujikawa rolled onto her side, and heaved a few times while Kana scowled at Kujikawa. Yeah, she was a girl. But she wasn’t a _weak_ one. When nothing came out, she sighed and said, “I don’t get why all the first years are so uptight. No wonder the senpai don’t want to hang out with us. I mean, I used to be kind of famous, you know?” 

“Yeah,” Kana said. “You did those swimsuit commercials.” 

“No, stupid, I was doing Qlorie commercials. Get with the program.” 

Same difference, Kana figured. But she propped Kujikawa up and said, “Gonna take you back to your room. Dipshit lush.” 

“No one ever likes to drink with me,” Kujikawa whined, and collapsed into Kana. Kana grunted as she lifted Kujikawa up and carried her back to he own room. Drinking, Kana decided, was stupid. Kujikawa drinking was stupid. This whole school thing was stupid. If it weren’t for Seta looking at her sideways when she caught Kana skipping school, Kana would’ve spent more time doing worthwhile things, like punching people out. Maybe knitting, too, if she was feeling fuzzy. 

Kana tossed Kujikawa onto her bed. She was nearly ready to set off when she saw the glimpse of a weird man by Kujikawa’s window. Kana yanked the window open and yelled, “Hey!” But the man was already walking away quickly. She couldn’t see much of him through the darkness, but what little she could see pissed her off. Suit, broad shouldered, middle-age, probably still a total punkass reporter who wanted to dig his fingers into Kujikawa’s ass. 

“Hey, get back here!” Kana shouted, leaping out the window and chasing after the man. But the man didn’t run; he turned, and faced her. Kana, by instinct, slowed down and stopped two meters away from him. His suit was a subdued black, but the shirt inside was a dusty gray. She couldn’t see much of his face, but he looked exhausted. And he was carrying a box. No camera. No recording equipment, though any reporter could hide it. Stalker, maybe. “The fuck are you?” 

“Does Sumi Seta go here?” said the man. 

“That ain’t the question,” Kana said, and cracked her knuckles for good measure. 

“I have a delivery for her. If you know her, then I would appreciate it if you could deliver it for me.”

Kana squinted at the man. He didn’t look dangerous. A little sad, sure. But not dangerous. “Who’s this from?” she said. 

“Everything is in the package,” he said. He set the box on the ground and backed away from Kana, holding his hands up in surrender. “I will leave now. But if you could give it to her. Please.” 

He vanished into the trees. It began to rain. 

“Damn it,” Kana said. Of course it’d rain right now. She looked down at the box, then at St. Justine’s, inviting and dry. 

Well, fuck. He had said please, hadn’t he?

 

*

 

It so happened that Yoko was spending this Saturday night on Seta’s bed, watching while Shirogane and Seta played a game of passive-aggressive bitchery cloaked in the form of Battleship. Shirogane was wearing pants and a jaunty hat on her head. Every now and then, Shirogane would check her phone, or out the window, or over to Yoko with an expression that said, “if this were an MMORPG, I would have fried your ass by now.” 

This was, of course, not how Yoko liked to spend her Saturdays. She _used_ to spend them doing all kinds of things, which normally ended with Seta staring up or down at her with maybe a hand up Yoko’s shirt. Then three weeks ago, Shirogane brought a shogi board in the middle of their study session, and inserted herself into Seta’s room despite Yoko’s best attempts to push her out. Two weeks later, Shirogane showed up again with chess. Yoko didn’t stick around last week, but Yoko was sure that her quasi-girlfriend and the bed-head detective had played a game of tonsil seeking. Who knew. In any case, Yoko’s only other options this week were to suffer through another evening of staring into her desk and twiddling her thumbs or roll around uselessly in her bed.

“B9,” said Naoto. 

“Miss.”

God, her life was sad. Maybe she’d go visit Tae. Kozue might be there, too, so it wouldn’t look weird or suspicious of Yoko showed up on her own. And Shirogane’s expression was going from, “you’re obviously unintelligent and foolish” to “I will now politely insinuate that you should leave before we have real adult conversations, plebeian.” 

“Hey,” Yoko said. “I’m heading back to my room for a moment. Do you want anything, Seta?” 

“I’m fine here,” Seta said. “You could ask Rise-chan for some whiskey.”

“Uh, no.” As much as she liked Kujikawa, last time, Kujikawa had brought a pound of powdered sugar and tricked Yoko into thinking it was crack or something. Yoko didn’t remember. It was probably one of those side effects of being drunk. 

“Rise-chan thinks you’re cute.” 

“I don’t care if other girls think I’m cute.” 

Seta laughed, wry and low. She beckoned Yoko to come near, and when Yoko did, she wrapped an arm around her waist. “I think you just haven’t noticed how cute you really are.” 

Shirogane’s face said, too clearly, “I would rather be playing Skyrim and get assaulted by a random-spawning dragon on the first level, that’s how much I don’t want to see this.” Shirogane said out loud, “C4.” 

“Hit.”

“D4.” 

“Hit.” 

Shirogane looked up at Yoko beneath the brim of her douchebag hat. Yoko grimaced, and said, “Whatever,” and went off to Tae’s room. The door was propped open, but Tae was alone, watching a soccer game on her computer. 

“Kozue’s not here?” Yoko said, sticking her head through the door. It was probably a good thing. Kozue was technically a day student, and there were only so many sleepovers the two of them could have before they started coming up with some really weird shit. It was always obvious when Tae and Kozue had been spending too much time with each other. Rumors like “Ms. Kashiwagi was involved in a threesome with Dumbledore and Jack Bauer” suddenly gained credibility. Mr. Hosoi’s puppet was secretly a weapon of mass destruction, ready to go off at any moment. Satonaka and Amagi had adopted a baby and were living on a tropical island somewhere in the Mediterranean being all happy and in lesbians with each other. Who the fuck knew. Maybe they were now hideously dead somewhere in the middle of some Korean backwater. 

“Said there was some urgent business at home,” Tae said. “I don’t know what, though.” 

“Must suck for you.” 

Tae laughed, and paused the game. “What are you doing here? Is your girlfriend’s cheating on you?” 

“Shut up, we’re not dating. I was just bored, that’s all.”

“Damn, you’re so obvious.” Tae stretched her arms, and then said, “You haven’t heard?” 

“What?” Yoko said, immediately on her guard. She sat on Tae’s bed. There was a bottle of Kozue’s perfume on the nightstand. Someone had painted Tae’s toes to match her track suit. 

“Ai-san saw Sumi with some strange people in town.” 

“Seta knows a lot of weird people. Stop calling her Sumi.”

“Well, it’s her name, isn’t it?” said Tae, completely not getting the point. “She plays a mean game of ball. Anyway, Ai-san said that those people were really weird. A man with a long nose and a Western woman wearing electric blue everything.” Tae clapped her hands together, and then hit play again. She laughed and said, “Probation officer.”

“What?” 

“Your girlfriend has a probation officer.” Tae gave Yoko a pitying look. “You make even more bad decisions without Satonaka around to yell at you, don’t you?”

Was that how Tae saw things? Bullshit, Yoko thought; Satonaka spent way too much time burying her foot into Yoko’s shins for Tae to believe that. “Shut up,” Yoko said, hopping off of Tae’s bed. “I have better things to do than watch you drool over balls.” 

“Well, don’t just go off on your own,” said Tae. “Didn’t you hear?” 

“Oh my god, how do you do that?” Yoko groaned. “It’s like you’re at the beginning and the end of every rumor ever. Sometimes I think you’re not even, like, a person, you’re just made of cameras and gossip.” 

“You’re the one who always has her head up her ass,” Tae said. “Ohtani was making the rounds earlier. Said that there was some strange old man lurking around the campus.”

“That’s retarded.” What was the point in having police officers if they couldn’t keep homeless creepsters out? “I’m going out.” 

Damn it. She had forgotten to ask Tae for some decent liquor. She nearly doubled back, but then she spotted Tatsumi rushing through the halls, her angry flurry of skirts flapping around her feet. Tatsumi was friends with Nao Konishi. Ergo, solution. 

“Hey, first year,” she called. 

“Fuck off!” Tatsumi shouted, actually spinning around to Yoko and giving her the finger. 

“No, fuck _you_ ,” Yoko said, which she regretted saying immediately. Tatsumi was a tiny, tattooed bundle of impotent fury, sure. But it was scary when she started flipping tables. “What are you doing here, first year? Come off to whore up to some senpai? How much you selling for, one thousand or two thousand?” 

“Shut up,” Tatsumi said, but she had stopped moving, at least. She looked around at all the rooms. “The fuck is room zero?” 

“What?” 

“’m looking for room zero,” Tatsumi said, and for the first time, when her eyes weren’t being assaulted by violent yellow-and-gray plaid and Tatsumi’s flaming red leather jacket, Yoko noticed the box under Tatsumi’s arm. “Got a delivery for her and shit. You gonna tell me where she is, or am I gonna have to beat it out of you, fuckass?” 

“Like I’m telling you, pipsqueak.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“Look, I need something to drink,” Yoko said. “Hook me up and I’ll tell you. If you keep yelling, Ohtani is going to wake up and report you to one of the officers.”

“You think I fucking give a shit about what the police says?” 

“Come on already.” 

“Fuck you!” Tatsumi said—Yoko really should have seen this coming, but one second she saw Tatsumi step to her, and the next, it felt like someone set off a bomb in her jaw and she was flat on her back, staring up Tatsumi’s skirt as she stomped down the hall. Yoko wanted to call after her, but decided against it. People were already opening their doors to see what all the commotion was, but when they saw it was just Yoko, they shut the doors again, or turned away. Yoko felt her cheeks go hot. Screw them. Screw them—she didn’t need them to like her. She picked herself off of the floor, and went back to her room. Shit, she’d need ice. But by now Tatsumi had probably found Seta, and she wasn’t crawling to Seta and begging to be taken care of in front of two jerkass first years.

She was halfway back to her room when the church bells began to ring again, clear and sad and ominous. Yoko checked her watch. It was half past nine on a Saturday. Why the fuck were the bells ringing now? But despite this, she felt uneasy. The bells continued to ring. Yoko thought that something dark moved across St. Justine, but it was just the rain, covering the campus in gray. 

She must had fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered was waking up on her bed to someone knocking on the door. 

“Who’s there?” she called, even though she knew who was the only person who’d come after her past midnight on a weekend. She could feel her blood, heating up and getting slow. 

“It’s me,” said Seta. 

“… Come in.” 

The door opened. Seta stepped inside. She had changed into her pajamas. Her hair was, carefully, brushed away from her face. 

“Had fun playing Battleship with Shirogane?” Yoko said, not meaning to sound spiteful, but knowing that she did even before she said them. 

“She’s good at it,” Seta said. Seta sat next to Yoko and, carefully, ran her hands through Yoko’s hair. “You look upset.” 

Yoko buried her face into her comforter. Comforter—what a weird way to describe a fluffy blanket. She looked up at Seta, and then back at her blanket, then out the window, where lashes of rain drippled down and down. Seta’s hand drifted over her cheek, and then kissed her neck. There was a part of her that was worried about something. And there was a part of her that just wanted to watch the rain cut through the dark trees, cover everything in the same, drab color and get lost in the noise, the wetness—upset? Upset about what?


	5. Girls Who Go

Sumi left Yoko’s room, walking along a straight groove between the wooden boards. Every other footstep clacked, metal against wood. The hall lights had been dimmed. It was well past midnight; she was on her way back to her room. The key clicked inside the lock. She settled into her bed, shivering as the back of her thighs hit the sheets. They were cold. Maybe, she thought, she should have stayed with Yoko. But Yoko always curled into herself afterwards. And Yoko’s bed was not very comfortable to begin with.

Her room was the same as it always was. No one had stepped inside since she left. The box was still on her desk. She had opened it once Kana brought it in. Opened it, then set it aside. Inside was a cell phone and a note: we’ll call you. Nothing fancy. Probably untraceable. No missed calls. Was she nervous? She was nervous, she decided. She was tired and her chest felt like everything was twisting around. Kana had said she got the box from a man in black. And who else would come here to look for her? She hadn’t had any friends in the city, and no one from her old life would want to be associated with her now. The only people who would come looking for her were not given to kindness. 

She lay in her bed, eyes closed. Maybe she’d fall asleep. 

At two in the morning, the phone rang. 

 

*

 

There was a car waiting by the back gates of St Justine. A strange man holding a clear, plastic umbrella stood by the door. His suit was sharp and fit well, and not at all gaudy. And there was a deadness to his expression that Sumi recognized. 

“Seta-san?” he said. 

“Yes.” Sumi tilted her own black umbrella forward to the man in acknowledgment. The man, strangely enough, smiled, and then bowed deeper. “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you.” But it was more or less clear that he was a gangster. One of Takarabe’s men. Who knew. 

“That’s all right,” he said. “I wasn’t brought on until recently. I am Taro Namatame.” 

“Pleased to meet you,” Sumi said. “Is she in the car?” 

“She is staying just outside of Inaba. The Amagis won’t be happy to see her. You’ll understand.” He opened the door for her. 

Sumi, for a moment, stood there in the rain, one hand ready to collapse the umbrella, and the other stiff. “I can’t leave Inaba without violating parole.” 

He looked down at her ankle. Then he said, “I see,” and knocked on the window. A second later, the trunk popped open. He rummaged about the back, balancing his umbrella against the open trunk and his shoulder. Sumi was, for a moment, consumed by the irrational thought that he might bring out a saw and cut her foot off—but instead he brought out a strange device. He beckoned her near, and flipped a switch. The lights on her anklet flickered, then went yellow. He checked his phone, and then punched some numbers into the device. 

“This should work for now,” he said. “She missed you, Seta-san.” He opened the door for her. In the dark, the shadows seemed to leap into his exhaustion, hollowing them into grim, empty caves. “Truly, she did.” 

Sumi, for a moment, did not know what to do. So she said, “As did I.” 

 

*

 

(You listen. Far off, motorcycles are coming and going. On the horizon is a girl, seen from behind, steadily approaching. Listen. You can hear everything falling into place, a soft noise like a deck of cards being thrown into air and landing in order. The motorcycles go. But the girl, who duplicates, then becomes one again, arrives.

It is a mystery why she chose—and that is important, see, to give people the illusion of choice when there is none—to come. You have been waiting for a while in your room, further from her than you’d like to be. People tell you that it is too dangerous to come here, don’t you know (of course they think you don’t know, you married into the family, married that damn boy and then he died, damn him) that the Amagis hate the Takarabes, or do the Takarabes hate the Amagis? Who fired the gun first, the Takarabes or the Amagis? And the answer is, God, who cares, who cares, who cares at all. So you form your own opinions, and stop asking. 

She looks the same. Hair cut and smoothed back in a little wave. The bearing of someone who thinks that she has suffered enough—what is she so sad about, she has no right. She’s in uniform. You ask her to sit by you on the bed. She stands. 

Why won’t you sit, you ask her, and she says, I don’t know. Then she says, Why are you here, Nami-san?

Can’t I come to see a dear friend? 

I suppose you can, she says. I thought you would be in prison. 

I know people. Come closer.

She does. 

Closer, you say. 

She does, until your knees are nearly touching. She looks tired up close. And she smells unfamiliar.

What do you want? she asks. 

I came to visit. Can’t I just visit? 

I have to go back to school. 

You promised me, you say. You promised that you would take care of things. 

Nami-san. 

You promised—)

—and then Sumi was riding back to St Justine. The lights on her ankle blinked yellow, and then red, red, red. 

 

*

 

It was still raining when Yoko woke up on Sunday. Seta, as usual, had schlepped back to her room sometime before morning. Which was cool. Yoko didn’t think anything of it. Anyway, it was business as usual. Cold, wet November Sunday. No classes. Some homework. Not much to do other than that. Breakfast, maybe? There were more bells ringing in the distance. She decided to play a game. 

She had been in bed with her PlayStation Portable for nearly an hour when Tae came barging in through her apparently still open door. Yoko nearly screamed, but just barely managed to suppress it. 

“Jesus Christ!” Yoko shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?” 

“Don’t tell me you’ve been in bed all morning.” Tae was already track-suited up, and had the peppy, varsity athlete, early morning cheer. Yoko was grossed out on principle. God, didn’t the lady know how to sleep in? 

“Shut up,” Yoko said. “What the hell is it?” 

“You haven’t heard?” 

“Oh my god,” Yoko groaned. “How do you even—”

“So you haven’t heard,” Tae said. “How did you not hear? Amagi-san from the Inn’s been shot twice. They say there’s some dead dude, too. And one of the hotels in Okina City’s been shot right up—some guy’s dead. We’re all on lockdown. Again. Better stock up on the goods again, because the sisters are going to keep us on campus until the cows come home.” 

“We don’t even have any cows in Inaba,” Yoko said. 

“That’s the weird part, isn’t it?” Tae said. “Satonaka always loved those weird kebabs, but no one knew where they were getting the meat. Do you think Satonaka and Amagi know?” 

“Geeze, how could they? They’re normal humans and not made of tracksuits and gossip.” 

“Just thought you might want to know,” Tae said. “Some of us don’t want our poor, confused lesbian friends to be left in the lurch. Do you always game shirtless, or are you naked there? Don’t leave your door unlocked and lounge around like that, someone might take it as an invitation.” 

“Shut up,” Yoko said. “Do you know where Seta went?” 

“Sumi? I heard she was in church. Praying for the souls of the dearly departed. You miss your girlfriend, huh?” 

“She’s not my girlfriend.” 

Tae clicked her tongue. “It’s hard being a repressed lesbian in an all girl’s Catholic school in Japan. It’s hard and no one understands.” 

“I just told you it wasn’t like that,” Yoko said, because it wasn’t—not really, even if that was the best word for it. Yoko didn’t know what they were; a little more than nothing, and certainly nothing very substantial. Tae laughed, boisterous as always, and left. 

 

*

 

Yoko, in light of the rumors, got changed and dragged herself to the common room. It was a drab, dank place that, despite the two fireplaces, never felt warm at all. As she suspected, Tae, Kozue, and Ebihara were in the center of the whole mess, Ebihara thrown casually over the lone sofa, Kozue and Tae switching between sitting and leaning against an armchair. They were surrounded by, it seemed, every girl in St Justine.

“New girl,” Kozue said, by way of greeting. 

“Give it a rest already,” Yoko said. She pushed her way to the front. “Geeze, you guys. You didn’t do this when Konishi or Yamano died.” 

“Yes, it’s remarkable how repeated murders in your hometown stop becoming so shocking,” Ebihara said. “We should all retreat into our rooms and ponder our inevitable deaths while the nuns impose lockdown and forbid us from leaving campus until the winter break. Can you believe those bitches?”

“Why are you even on campus again to begin with?” Yoko said. 

“We’re rumor mongers,” Kozue said with a sigh. “My father heard about Amagi-san, and naturally, what better way to sympathize with his dreadful plight than by seeking commiseration with my friends?” 

“You’re using this as an excuse to get out of a marriage meeting, aren’t you?” Ebihara said. 

“It’s always tradition this, tradition that,” Kozue said. “Even when people are dropping dead everywhere in town.”

“Then why don’t they just leave?” Yoko said, uncomfortably aware that the girls that had crowded around the trio had mostly departed to the other fireplace by now. She didn’t know if she should feel happy that the twisted sisters or the terrible threes or whatever the current school’s nickname for them was sometimes talked to her like she was one of their own. Then, of course, one or the other would sneer, “new girl” and that’d be the end of it. And sure enough, the three of them laughed, as though she had said something funny.

“Well,” Kozue said, “there’s always the family business to take care of.” 

“Family business?” Yoko said. 

“Oh, you know,” said Kozue. “The kind of businesses that families around here get into.” 

Yoko, magically, kept her jaw from dropping. “God, it’s like this whole place is a yakuza stronghold.” 

“Not _that_ kind of business, dumbass.” Kozue hit Yoko’s shoulder. “We own a lot of the land around here. Farming stuff. It’s kind of true, though. It makes you wonder why the rest of us haven’t left by now.”

“Fear,” Tae said. 

“Money,” Ebihara said. 

“Honor,” Kozue said. 

“Well, it’s obvious why _some_ people still live in Inaba,” Ebihara said. “They have no choice. And let’s face it: we’re girls in a men’s world. We don’t get a choice.” 

“That’s just depressing,” Yoko said. 

“The real question is,” Tae said, “why those who can leave haven’t.” 

“Stupidity,” Ebihara said. 

“Fate,” Kozue said. “Or a GPS anklet.” 

“Maybe they just haven’t noticed,” Tae said. 

“How would they not notice?” Yoko said. Ebihara, Kozue, and Tae looked at each other, and, collectively, shrugged. 

_Honor_ , Amagi had said. Which was stupid, because Yoko had watched enough movies to know that honor only got people killed. And she knew that something had gone wrong, that if she had tried harder, then maybe she and Seta could have kept Amagi here, although might not have been the right thing or the best thing. But how was running away for some distant place while her father was in a hospital bed, dying, any better? And Yoko remembered, suddenly, the cafe and the sunlight, how it Seta seemed to glow and how the light sank into Amagi, was sucked into her and then didn’t come out; how, sometimes, when she thought about Amagi, she saw a woman sitting by the window of a train, sitting while everything flew out of her and into the wild world outside. 

She hadn’t liked Amagi, not the idea of Amagi, not the dark, crawling underbelly of the truth about her. But—but it should have been better than this, shouldn’t it? They all—Kozue, Ebihara, Seta, all of them—would have been better off as normal, unremarkable girls without inns or families or blood. 

 

*

 

Yoko went back to her room and continued her session of Monster Hunter. Seta came back, dressed in a heavy brown dress, flat shoes, and white gloves on her hands. Her hair, normally fluffy and artfully styled into a neat little mess, had been combed and coifed. She looked, Yoko thought, like one of those very elegant, very sad women from old period dramas. Yoko was honestly surprised that she wasn’t wearing a veil.

“Is it mass or something?” Yoko said, setting the PSP on the covers. “Because I didn’t know.” 

“No,” Seta said. “I just went to pray for my soul.” 

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

“I’m serious,” said Seta. “You never think about it?” 

Never. Yoko didn’t really care for mythology. It struck her as a load of bullshit. “Well, I don’t really believe in anything,” she said, and knew, instantly, that it had been the wrong thing to say, because Seta smiled, painfully, and then sat on the chair with her hands folded away in her lap. 

It wasn’t like Seta believed in anything concrete, either, though. Praying to everything you met didn’t make one a _believer_. 

“What’s the saying?” Seta said. “A Shinto birth, a Christian wedding, and a Buddhist death. Do you even want those?” 

“I told you,” Yoko said, and wished that it weren’t a breach of etiquette to play a game and talk to people at the same time. “I don’t believe in that kind of stuff.” 

“Are you familiar with Pascal’s wager? Better to go through the motions of pretending to believe in something rather than be left in the lurch if there is a real God. And if there is no God, then you have at least enriched your own life. I think combining all of those religions into one lifetime is a smart idea. But I digress.” Seta crossed her legs. Her stockings were black and opaque, which ordinarily would have made Yoko’s stomach clench. But here she thought that Seta looked more like a painting, or perhaps a sculpture. Yoko sat up. It felt only right. 

“What is it?” Yoko said.

“It’s hard to know, isn’t it?” Seta said. “The world works in such odd ways.” Seta’s gloves sat over her legs, limp and soft. Her whole body looked like that, like something that needed to be filled, empty and hollow. As though the real Sumi Seta had stepped out for a while, and forgot to come back. Then she said, “Have you heard about Yukiko-san’s father?” 

“Yeah, I did. Sucks for him.” 

“Yeah. Have you been in contact with Chie-san or Yukiko-san?” 

“Like they would want me to,” Yoko said, not at all bitterly. 

“You’d think that they ought to know, by now.”

“How could they?” 

“The underworld is a small one,” Seta said. “Once you fall in, it’s hard to get out. Even if you run away. They’ll find you. They’ll find you and that’ll be it. They’ll tell you, they’ll tell you everything that you haven’t done for them.” Her hands trembled as she took off the gloves. And her eyes were dark, dark and frightened. “They sell guns, you know. Armor-piercing ones smuggled from Russia. If you can, you should get one for yourself. Just in case.” 

“This is Japan,” Yoko said. “What am I going to do with a gun? What if someone catches me with one?” 

“It’ll be safer that way,” Seta said. She reached for Yoko’s hair, and Yoko could feel her hand shake, and that made Yoko start to tremble, too, just in a little way. The tiny muscles in her gut and a shortness of breath that had nothing to do with arousal, just fear from seeing someone else be scared. Seta pulled away, looking half-disappointed and half-disgusted with Yoko—god, she couldn’t stop fucking everything up today, but it wasn’t her fault. Not this time, at least. Seta pushed Yoko away. Yoko grabbed onto Seta’s arm. 

“What’s going on here?” Yoko said. 

“I’m going to pray some more,” Seta said.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” she said, and Seta stroked her face. “What are you doing?” 

“Ssh,” she said. “Let me take care of you.”

And what could she have done? She could have tried to stop Seta, or she could have gone after Seta. But what would have been the point? Amagi’s father had been shot. Amagi and Satonaka had run off. Some other mysterious dude running around the campus. Who knew what the fuck was going on. That wasn’t, Yoko thought in a small voice, her world. She didn’t belong there. 

“Hold on,” Yoko said. “If you—if you get in trouble, you can call me. You know that, right?” 

“I’d rather rely on god,” Seta said. She looked, for a moment, on the verge of saying something important. But then she said, “Naoto-kun will be mad at me.”

“Why?” Yoko said. 

“It’s probably because I love you too much.”

“You don’t love me, you ass.”

“Maybe I don’t,” Seta said. “But it’s close enough, isn’t it? Maybe some people shouldn’t love. Maybe this is the closest that people should get to one another.” She looked, for a moment, ready to say something. But instead, she said “If anyone comes looking for me, you can tell them whatever you’d like.” 

She left her white gloves on Yoko’s chair. By the time Yoko realized Seta had forgotten them, it was too late. Seta wasn’t in her room. Yoko went to the church, where Adachi had died, and Seta wasn’t there, either. Shirogane was, though, sitting in the pews with her legs crossed. 

“Oh?” said Shirogane. “I didn’t take you for the religious type, Yoko-senpai.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Yoko said. 

“You’re even worse than Kana-kun,” Shirogane said. “You’ve come here looking for Sumi-san, haven’t you? The rumor-senpai said that she’d be here. Yet here we are.”

Yoko didn’t say anything. Shirogane looked so satisfied with herself that she was worried she might actually try to punch Shirogane in the face if she did. Yoko realized that Shirogane had something bright and metal in her hand. A police badge. 

Shirogane fussed with her hat. Then she said, “The police have decided that they have need for my services after all. I’m certain you’ve heard of the recent strife between Amagi-san and the Takarabe group.”

“Everyone knows about it now,” Yoko said. “You’d have to be a shut-in to not notice.”

“I suppose so,” Shirogane said, but she sounded even more smug than she normally did. “Although I doubt that the Takarabe name means anything to you. I, of course, am in the position to grace you with that information.” 

No wonder the police had kicked Shirogane out before, Yoko thought. Pompous little tool. “Look,” Yoko said. “Screw you, man. Just screw you.” 

“Wait,” Shirogane said. “I believe that we could help each other. We both know that Sumi-san has left St Justine.” Yoko hadn’t, but now that Shirogane had said so, it seemed pretty obvious. “While Sumi-san and I do not have the relationship that the two of you have, I am certain that we both wish to look out for her well-being. I believe Sumi-san has gone back to the underworld.” 

“Oh yeah?” Yoko said. 

Shirogane gave Yoko a look full of annoyance and ‘you’re stupid, aren’t you?’ 

“I mean,” Yoko said, “everyone in this town seems to be in that position. So what if she goes over?” 

Shirogane sighed, and pressed her face into her hand. 

“Look,” Yoko said. “It doesn’t make a difference. She was bad news from the start, you know? I should’ve guessed it’d turn out like this.” From the first day they met, from the first time Seta kissed her and then last night—she knew it wouldn’t have lasted. And Seta had always been off her rocker, with the whole murder thing. And Seta was so—strange. Or maybe broken. And, Yoko repeated to herself, they weren’t from the same world. Yoko would grow up and Seta would disappear from her life deep into the underground and Yoko—she’d be ordinary and boring. She’d go to college and she’d get a job somewhere and she’d marry someone and that would be it. She’d have two kids or something, send them off to college and no one she knew would ever be a lesbian yakuza princess.

“I see,” Shirogane said. “I shan’t try to convince you otherwise.” She wrote something down on a piece of paper, and then pushed it to Yoko’s hand with clumsy bravado. “If you have need for me, then that is my number. We should make use of each other.” 

“Yeah,” Yoko said. “Sure.” 

Shirogane snorted, did one final adjustment to her hat, and left. Yoko looked into the eyes of Jesus on the cross, then St Justine, then the Virgin Mary. And as she did, she could hear it, the sound of bells echoing in her head, even after everything else had gone still.


	6. The Girl Who Returned

_december._

By all means, the library should not have been the most beautiful building on St Justine’s. The dorms were decrepit and sad, or, as the brochures put it, “rustic and charming.” The school buildings themselves were not bad, but they were old. Naoto always had the faint, frightening impression that if she stepped too hard, her foot might go through the floorboards. The chapel should have been striking, and it was, from the outside. The inside was cold and damp. The statues of the Virgin Mary and Saint Justine were plaster casts, and badly done ones at that. The only point of beauty was the wooden Jesus, surrounded by candles. There were fair things to be said about the French windows and the steady stream of sunlight coming in from the windows to fall on the Jesus. But even then, the light only served to make the shadows beneath his eyes stronger and the cut of his suffering face even more frightening. 

The library, though, was a building just as old as the dorms, but ten or twenty times more beautiful. The windows, enormous and tall, set everything in a pale, yellow glow. The rugs, though worn, were rich and ornate. Scenes from the _Oresteia_ were stitched with frightening detail. It’d be best if Naoto did not enumerate which tales the weaver had chosen, but it went without saying that the person in question had a disturbed imagination. 

It was while staring at the carpet that a familiar trio of senpai cornered her. Naoto had long dubbed them as the rumor-senpai, collectively, in her mind, since they were an endless fount of misinformation and wanton obscurity. Ebihara slid into the seat on Naoto’s left, Ichijo to Naoto’s right, and tracksuit-senpai—Nagase was her name—took her place behind Naoto’s chair. 

“Shirogane-kun,” Ichijo said. “Studying hard as always.” 

“Indeed,” Naoto said. “I suppose that with Amagi-san gone, you can now rightfully assume your top place on the school rankings.”

“Ouch,” Ichijo said. “Amagi and I were friends, you know? Our families were pretty friendly with one another.”

“I’m sure they were.” 

“So suspicious,” Ichijo said, and patted Naoto’s hat. “Our families were in different businesses, but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have gotten along.” 

“Certainly.”

“No wonder you have no friends,” Ebihara said, raising her eyebrows. “And we’re all really trying here.” This was not so convincing coming out of Ebihara’s mouth. As though sensing Shirogane’s doubt, she let out a short puff of air from her nose and said, “ _They’re_ trying. I don’t see why you matter at all.”

“What I wonder is why you have any friends,” said Nagase. “It’s not like you’re putting any effort into this relationship.”

“Girls, girls, girls.” 

“What is it that you want from me, Ichijo-san?” Naoto said. 

“You know,” Ichijo said.

“A little chat,” said Nagase.

“Whatever,” said Ebihara. 

“The usual, basically,” Ichijo said. 

After Seta’s disappearance, the police station had, grudgingly, allowed Naoto to return as a consultant, whereupon she had a detective and three police officers forced out of the office on suspicions of collaborating with the Amagi and Takarabe group. Her popularity was quite remarkable. Which was to say, it was making an earnest attempt at hitting zero with the velocity and fury of a flaming meteor. After some debate, Naoto decided it best to continue living at St Justine. It worked out better for everyone in the long run. And Tatsumi was right: Kujikawa needed someone to make sure she didn’t vanish into the ethers of alcohol and possibly other stronger, illicit substances. And not for the first time, Naoto wondered what the rumor senpai were up to all the time. Surely they were not up to anything dangerous. They were three civilian girls who liked to spread rumors. No yakuza would be dumb enough to blow their cover so badly. 

“I’m afraid that I have little to offer,” Naoto said. “Much of what I know is strictly classified.”

“Come on, Shirogane,” Ichijo said. “I’m just asking for the teachers’ patrolling schedule. A girl has to go on her mixers, you know? Do you have any idea how stuffy the marriage dates my parents set me up for are? I’m dying. They make me put on traditional underwear.”

“Too much information,” Ebihara said. 

“You like it,” Ichijo said. “Well, how about this? I tell you what I know and you tell me what we need to know.” 

Now that was what Naoto wanted. She put on a careful facade of disinterest. “I’m listening.” 

“I’ve heard from people that Amagi and Satonaka are returning to Inaba,” Ichijo said. “Ai can confirm it. With the whole business of Amagi-san’s father getting shot and all. Ai?” 

“It’s true,” said Ebihara. “She didn’t come back earlier because she had run away somewhere and no one could find her. But then one of their allies in Tokyo spotted her and notified her family. Then Amagi was a huge bitch about coming back.”

“That’s awfully detailed,” Naoto said. 

“I made half of it up.” 

“That’s not funny,” Naoto said. “Yukiko Amagi-san is wanted for murder. If you are lying about her whereabouts, I could have you for obstruction of justice.” 

“Relax your pants, Shirogane,” Ebihara said. “Amagi’s coming back. They say she’ll come in by the Sunday train and will have escorts waiting for her at the Yasoinaba station. Now tell us about the patrol schedule.”

“There will be a dead spot at eleven-fifteen tomorrow night,” said Naoto, a little grudgingly. “I am certain that your ventures in heterosexual dating will prove not only fruitful.” 

“Thanks as always, Shirogane-kun. You’re a good pal.” And then, “‘Heterosexual dating’? What?”

Ichijo and Ebihara rose and left, walking between the wooden bookshelves. Nagase, though, lingered. Naoto had never thought much of Nagase, who served as the student body informant to Ichijo and Ebihara’s off-campus powers. But she was, unlike her two friends, not a person of remarkable wealth or power, and seemed content to watch everyone run amok and into higher and new levels of embarrassing stupidity. But after a moment, Nagase said, “Satonaka didn’t have anything to do with Amagi and Adachi.” 

“I am not in a position to divulge,” Naoto said.

“No, I’m serious,” Nagase said. “I know how you dumbass police work. You know Satonaka has nothing to do with it, but you’ll arrest her anyway, just to make Amagi crack. I’m telling you now that Satonaka would never do anything like that.” 

“Not even for Amagi-san?” Naoto said. When Nagase’s jaw clenched, she said, “You never know.”

Nagase glowered at Naoto. She—rather pettily, Naoto thought—swiped Naoto’s hat off of her head. When Naoto bent down to pick it up, Nagase grabbed Naoto by the collar and yanked her to her feet. “She didn’t do anything,” Nagase said. “Don’t be an asshole.” Then she let go of Naoto and followed the path Ichijo and Ebihara had taken out of the library. Naoto picked her hat back up, and fit it over her head. It didn’t matter if she was smaller or physically weaker than someone, she told herself. She could handle herself just fine. If Nagase had really tried, then Naoto knew ways to take her down. 

She doubted Amagi would be foolish enough to return by train. But there was a good chance that Satonaka might. 

 

* 

 

They missed the bus, so they were walking down to the train station. Yoko kept a good two meters between her and Shirogane at all times. It was cold, even colder than the last time she bothered to head down to the train station back in November to head to Okina with Tae and Kozue and Ai. Being near Shirogane made her feel colder—probably because Shirogane was a huge bitch. Whatever. She was only going along with this because Shirogane said that Satonaka was coming back to Inaba to repent and reform, which was good, because Yoko’s mother called and said that Satonaka’s mother kept crying and the whole thing was getting kind of annoying. Yoko’s mother sometimes suggested pulling Yoko out of St Justine, with the way her friends kept moving away. 

Her friends? What friends? Satonaka just kicked her around. And Seta—they hadn’t been friends. 

“Are you cold, Yoko-san?” Shirogane said. “I can offer you my coat if you need it.” 

“Like I’d want to see you undressed,” Yoko said. 

Shirogane, who had her fingers on her coat buttons, stopped and gave a look that could have redefined condescension. “I assure you, I only made the offer because I assumed a person of your constitution would need additional protection from the cold.”

“I’m warm enough, shut up.” Yoko tugged her scarf tighter around her neck until it felt as though she might end up choking herself. They were still a good twenty minutes from the station. God, this was so awkward. This was the last favor she was ever going to do for Shirogane. After this, she was going to get up, move to Tokyo, and stay there for the rest of her life and leave the country towns with their crazy yakuza gangs alone forever. “Why did you invite me?” 

Shirogane’s cheeks went pink. Embarrassment—or maybe because she had something to hide. Who knew. Maybe it was just the cold. “I remembered that you and Satonaka-san were friends.”

“We weren’t, though.” 

“You, Sumi-san, Satonaka-san, and Amagi-san had an intimate conversation at Souzai Daigaku the day of Amagi-san’s departure,” said Shirogane. “And my sources tell me that Satonaka-san was quite fond of you. She thought you were incompetent and needed looking after.” 

“Ha,” Yoko said. “Well, she’s the one who fell in love with a crazy hell princess, so I think she’s the one who needs looking after now. I think she had this weird fetish for taking care of people. She couldn’t help herself.” 

Shirogane had looked less impressed with Yoko before. Yoko just couldn’t remember when. 

“But she couldn’t help hurting people when she did help them,” Yoko said, and she didn’t know why she couldn’t shut up. But she had been thinking about Satonaka and Amagi and Seta a lot over the last few weeks—she didn’t know why, but it was probably because of how Kozue, Tae, and Ebihara kept buzzing about it, throwing rumors and money around. “She just wound up blowing everything she touched. And now she’s finally found something that she can’t blow up, you know? Because—” Because Amagi didn’t have a dick, oh, damn it, why was her head like this? “—she’s finally found something so messed up that getting involved with Satonaka would be an _improvement_. God, Amagi. That poor bitch.”

“What an entertaining theory,” Shirogane said. 

“It’s probably right,” Yoko said. 

“Doubtlessly so. Your logic and deduction are stunning. I am bowled over by the devastating whorl of destruction that is your sardonic wit.” 

‘ _Bitch_ ,’ Yoko thought. She stuffed her hands deeper into her pockets. 

“In any case,” Shirogane said, “I thought that having you there would put Satonaka-san at ease. From what I heard, she really was fond of you. Nearly as fond as she was of her dog.”

“You know something, Shirogane?” Yoko said. “The more words come out of your mouth, the more I want to throw my shoe into your face.” 

Shirogane smiled, unpleasantly. Then she turned away from Yoko. 

They were halfway to the station when they saw a police car. A man was leaning against the hood, reading the newspaper. A cup of coffee rested on the roof. Yoko didn’t recognize him, though Shirogane apparently did. She stopped and scowled at the man, who didn’t look any more pleased to see Shirogane than she did him. 

“Dojima-san,” Shirogane said. 

“Shirogane,” he said. They both crossed their arms at the same time. “What are you doing here?” 

“I am on personal business.”

“With a friend?” The idea of Shirogane having a friend seemed to strike Dojima just as strange as it struck Yoko. But Yoko wasn’t about to say that to Shirogane, who would undoubtedly make some snarky comment that would make Yoko want to slap something. 

“I’m just tagging along,” Yoko said. Shirogane, subtly, moved her foot over and stepped on Yoko’s toes. 

“I have heard that the police was making moves to apprehend Amagi,” Shirogane said. 

“That’s classified information,” Dojima said. “And you’ve caused enough of a ruckus with your Amagi hunt. Leave them be.” 

“You only say that, sir, because you have become used to the complacency and idleness of corruption,” Shirogane said, and Yoko wanted to smack her forehead into her palms, because seriously, who says that to a police officer? “If I may say so, my arrival to this town was necessary to purge the yakuza from this town’s police force.”

Dojima scowled. He stepped forward. Then he, lightly, hit the side of Naoto’s head. “You idiot,” he growled. “This isn’t America and the FBI. There’s a balance here. If you throw away everyone’s who’s ever crossed the line, you’d have to put the whole town in a dumpster. We don’t have the manpower to intervene on that scale.” He put a hand to his brow, as though to block the sun. “Listen, kid. The men you had tossed out weren’t the Amagis’ men.” 

“That can’t be possible,” Shirogane said. “They had clear ties with the yakuza. They accepted ludicrously enormous bribes. The evidence—”

“They were with another group,” Dojima said. “Based in Koshiro city. The Amagis and the Takarabes have been at each others’ throats for years. The Takarabes were the ones who shot Amagi.” 

Shirogane opened her mouth, then shut it, sullenly. 

“I don’t like them anymore than you do,” Dojima said. “But the Amagis are a part of this town. They have been for years. You have to have a subtle hand.”

“So you are content to allow them to run amok, murdering and stealing and doing whatever they’d like? They killed your partner, and you’re waiting for a chance to use your ‘subtle hand’?” 

Yoko shivered. She didn’t know why. And the worst part was, Dojima noticed it. But he said nothing, just rubbed his beard and then said, “Yukiko Amagi’s gone underground, Shirogane. I’ve sent her case files to Tokyo, but the Amagis aren’t big enough to get on their radar. And she’s too smart to come back here. Wherever she is, we won’t see her in Inaba for a long time.”

“You are a sympathizer,” Shirogane said. “Hardly surprising, given that your own niece—”

“What Sumi did is none of your business,” Dojima said, cold and frosty. He zipped his coat up all the way, and stepped back into his car. “You’re a smart girl, but you have no sense of subtlety or timing. This case is too big for you right now.”

It had almost sounded kindly and paternal to Yoko’s ears, but Shirogane evidently had heard only insults because she bristled and said, “That is what you would like me to believe, I am sure.”

“Wait a second,” Yoko said before Dojima could go. Dojima, wearily, looked at her. “Do you know Seta?” 

“She’s my niece,” Dojima said. “Are you a friend of hers?” 

“Sure,” Yoko said. Never mind the technicalities. Inside her coat pockets, she balled her fists up. Who cared, she knew, about Seta—but still, information was information. Kozue and Tae would want to hear it. And as for whether Yoko wanted to hear it—Yoko didn’t think it mattered. “Have you heard anything from her? No one at school knows where she is.” 

“She’s gone,” Dojima said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything more. If I find anything out, I’ll have someone from the station let you know. What’s your name?”

“Hanamura,” she said. “Yoko Hanamura in class 2-B.” 

“Hanamura,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” 

And with that, he drove away. Shirogane watched him, her frown morphing into something between a scowl, a pout, and general petty frustration. “He will send someone for you,” Shirogane said. “As frustrating as it can be to work with him, he is not a man who will fail to keep his promises.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Yoko said. “Some help he was.”

“I am afraid that our sentiments regarding Dojima-san are regretfully the same.” Shirogane sighed, and tried to calm herself. “I have some business with the police, so we will be making a stop by my office before proceeding to our final destination.”

“Okay,” said Yoko. “Where is your office?” 

“Kana-chan’s mother has been so grateful as to lend me a spot in the back of her shed.” 

Yoko didn’t laugh. But it was a close thing. “You and Tatsumi got something going on?” 

“Unlike you, Yoko-san, my preferences are for the dashing and debonair, but not dangerous or potentially homicidal,” Shirogane said. “And Kana-chan, unfortunately, is clumsy and a liability to herself. Though I admit she is very skillful in other respects. However, these traits that she displays are—”

Five minutes later, she finished her manifesto on why she did not have a thing for Tatsumi. Yoko had stopped listening somewhere after the second sentence to think of better, more important things, like the shape of Shirogane’s stupid hat or the weather or whatever it was that was more satisfying than listening to Shirogane extol the virtues of British literature and Meiji era detective novels. 

“Wow, that was convincing,” Yoko said. 

“I am afraid that with you, you will label me ‘in denial’ if I were to give you a short answer, and ‘lesbian’ were I to give you a longer one,” Shirogane said. “As such, I opted to give you the answer that gave me the most satisfaction.” 

They had arrived at the shopping district. Shirogane’s face was a little pink, either from the cold or from the exertion of talking Yoko’s ear off. 

“I shall go up to Tatsumi-san’s shed,” Shirogane said. “If you would please get me coffee, then that would be greatly appreciated.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Yoko replied. 

“Very well, then,” Shirogane said. “In which case, you may have the honor of waiting for me until I return.” 

Yoko was half-tempted to just go and take a bus back to St Justine’s. But that’d be mean. Shirogane trekked up the path to the northern shopping district. Yoko went into Shiroku’s and picked up two cups of coffee. When she stepped back out, the streets were empty. Not much of a surprise; it was a cold day. Most people were probably at home. But that wasn’t the weird thing. It was quiet, as though the cold had sucked the noise out of the street. No cars, no people, not even a bird. 

A black car rolled up to Yoko. A window rolled down. Inside was Yukiko Amagi. 

“Hello, Hanamura-san,” she said. She didn’t smile at him, but Yoko felt as though she should have. 

Holy shit. Yoko nearly dropped her coffees. _That_ apparently amused Amagi enough to smile. 

“It certainly has been a while, hasn’t it?” Amagi said. 

“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Yoko hissed. “Shouldn’t you be in—I don’t know, France right now?” 

Amagi laughed, pretty and girl-like. Then she grew somber. “You look cold, Yoko-san. Would you like a ride back to St Justine? Are you still going there?” 

“Yeah,” Yoko said. “But I’m waiting for someone.”

“Shirogane-kun, you mean?” Amagi said. She opened the door and slid to the side. “I’m sure she’ll understand.”

Yoko, for a moment, hesitated. Then she set both cups of coffee on the red mailbox and got in. 

Amagi looked well. A little gaunt and tired, maybe. Her dark blue kimono, tied with a red obi, made her look older—or maybe the whole running away from Inaba thing had gotten to her. The inside of the car was larger than it looked from the outside. The seats were warm and leather; there was even a mini-fridge. Yoko wondered, briefly, if it had any alcohol, then decided right away that was a dumb thing to think about. 

“So where’s Satonaka?” Yoko said. “I heard the two of you came back together.” 

“Chie? I forgot the two of you were friends,” Amagi said. “No, she stayed in the city.”

“Which city?” 

“Oh, the one where we’ve been staying lately,” Amagi said. “I’m not planning on telling you, Yoko-san. —May I call you that?”

“Go ahead,” Yoko said, mostly because Amagi could have her killed for no real reason. Even if she wouldn’t, it didn’t mean that Yoko shouldn’t stay on Amagi’s good side. “It’s dangerous for you to be here, isn’t it?” 

“I won’t be staying long,” Amagi said. “I only came to check on my father, after all. And to pick you up.” 

“What?” Yoko wasn’t even trying to follow what was going on. Damn it. This was all Shirogane’s fault. She should have just stayed at St Justine. Forget about potentially seeing your former bullies return to Inaba. Should have just stayed in school or something, should have stayed far away from Shirogane and the whole organized crime thing and anything related to it. Because hadn’t Seta taught her anything, that it would hurt and afterwards, she was supposed to be smarter and better than this—better than wanting to know what had happened to Amagi and Satonaka. Or what had happened to Seta. 

“I’ll only be borrowing you for a short time,” Amagi said, which didn’t do anything to make Yoko feel better. The car was pulling away from the shopping district and away from St Justine and far, far away from Shirogane. “I promise you, you’ll be returned to St Justine unharmed.” 

That made Yoko feel loads better. _Loads_. She guessed discomforting customer service was just one of the many things that they taught at the Yakuza Inn. “Why me?” Yoko said. “I don’t get it. Why not someone else?” 

Amagi smiled, thinly. Then she said, “You’re insurance.” Insurance? That sounded bad. Yoko didn’t even want to try to think about what Amagi had meant. But then Amagi kept speaking. “You and Seta-san were close, weren’t you? I have business with Seta-san. You’re going to make sure that the Takarabes don’t kill us before we get there.”


	7. She's Not The Same

The three of them were at Souzai Daigaku for coffee when they saw Shirogane pass by. Tae perked up, then scowled. Kozue looked around for any of Shirogane’s friends. Ai stirred her fruity tea. Her hand drifted to her cigarette pack, then stilled. 

“Wonder what she’s doing,” Tae said, taking a swig of her power drink. 

“She and Kana-chan are pretty close,” Kozue said. “Or so you told me.” 

“Tongue-in-the-mouth close, or just normal close?” 

“Shirogane comes with a free chastity belt,” Tae said. “It’s called ‘being a huge bitch.’” 

“Bitter,” Ai said.

“Like you think any better of her.” 

“Kana-chan’s still at St. Justine, taking care of Kujikawa,” Kozue said. “They had a pretty big party there last night. Or so I hear.” 

“You weren’t even on campus,” Tae said. “You were at home with your maids and good heating.” 

“That means Shirogane’s just walking in for no reason,” Ai said. “She’s having an affair with Tatsumi’s mother.”

“God, that’s gross,” Tae said. 

“It’s a good one, though,” Kozue said. “You want to bet on it?” 

“Five thousand for sleeping with Tatsumi’s old windbag,” said Ai. 

“Ten thousand says she’s there for new pants,” said Tae. “God, I’m broke.” 

“Twenty thousand says she’s there to pick up one of those cute stuffed animals Tatsumi-san makes,” Kozue said. “I never knew the old lady was so good at sewing stuff like that. They could make a business out of it.” 

“Maybe she’s in there for a skirt,” Ai said. 

They all took a moment to think of Shirogane in a skirt. Then, as one, they picked up their beverages and drank. Some people rise up to the challenges of finding the truth and clearing away lies. These three ladies are not those people. Thank goodness for that, Kozue thought. What the hell would they talk about otherwise? 

 

*

 

The car ride to wherever Amagi was taking her was probably the smoothest and best one in Yoko’s possibly tragically short life. The road was perfectly smooth. The car didn’t bounce or rock or make any noise beyond a low, reassuring buzz from the engine. Amagi had even provided Yoko with a coke. Great. Awesome. Sweet bitching ride. The soda fizzed over when Yoko opened it, and Amagi laughed at that, her laugh pitched too high for it to be purely mirth. Not the nice kind of mirth, at least. Amagi sipped from her glass—champagne?—and watched Yoko with an excruciating, knife’s edge stare. Her cheeks were lightly pink, but her eyes stayed sharp and focused, and she kept looking at Yoko with this curious, flickering expression, like she either had a question or was plotting Yoko’s horrible death by fire. Finally, Yoko couldn’t stand it anymore. “You’ve been in touch with Seta?” she said. 

She smiled, a secret, quiet smile. And then said, “Did the two of you stay friends after I left?” 

“Whatever,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.” 

Amagi gave Yoko a strange look. Then she said, “She’s made a name for herself in the business. I was wondering what could have compelled her to go back. It’s hard to stay away.“ 

Well, why, Yoko wanted to say, but didn’t. She had the acute sense of this car ride was rather like disappearing somewhere else. Not just moving across the rice paddies and highway, but descending into a place impossible to leave. Why did people stay in Inaba? Why did they leave? Honor, kindness, money. Why did they leave? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they stayed in their strange world for the rest of their lives. 

“What has Seta done?” Yoko said. 

Amagi swirled the champagne in her cup. She looked into the fluke and said, “It doesn’t matter.” 

“You killed Adachi, didn’t you?” Yoko said. 

“I don’t see why that matters, either.” 

“If you don’t want to be part of that world,” she said, “then you shouldn’t have killed him.” 

“And if you didn’t want to be part of this world, you shouldn’t have gotten involved with Seta.” Amagi traced something on her kimono with her fingertip, and Yoko’s leg went cold, as though Amagi was touching her. “Everything looks so simple to you from the outside, doesn’t it? You think that if you live your life one way, if you make the right decisions, then you’ll life an easy life. And you can do that. But there aren’t any choices. It doesn’t matter where you were planning on going. It only matters where you are meant to go. The Takarabes shot my father. Seta-san is a member of the Takarabe group. And you are her friend. It is selfish of me to say so, but it’s a series of extraordinarily convenient coincidences, don’t you think?” 

A set of really shitty coincidences, in Yoko’s opinion. Convenient coincidences—convenient, she wondered, for who? 

“I’d feel sorry for you, Yoko-san,” Amagi said, “if you didn’t already know what you were getting into.” 

“I didn’t,” Yoko said. 

“Everyone knew it,” Amagi said. “Even before I left. Everyone knew that Seta-san had a past. Anyone who’s lived in Inaba could see the kind of things that Seta would lead you to.” 

Kujikawa’s increasingly drug and alcohol-fueled parties. Shirogane, going from schoolgirl to bloodhound. And as for Yoko—

“I didn’t know,” Yoko said, but the words seemed empty and false. “I really didn’t.” 

 

*

 

Koshiro wasn’t so far from Inaba. It was, in fact, just over two hours by car; and the car had been going at a snail’s pace, which had just made the anticipation worse than if it had sped down the highway at a thousand kilometers per hour. She and Amagi had nothing more to say after a little while. Yoko wondered how Satonaka was and if they’d see her, but maybe if Satonaka were there, then maybe Amagi wouldn’t have kidnapped Yoko. 

Koshiro city wasn’t as grisly or dark as Yoko thought it would be. It was an ordinary city with ordinary streets and ordinary buildings. The buildings, were, admittedly, pushed close together, so nearly every street was as tight and narrow as an alleyway. The car went in deep into the city, to a part where the buildings were so close and near to one another that there was hardly any light on the street that wasn’t a neon street sign or light from a shop window. Yoko realized that their car wasn’t traveling alone. Several more cars were following theirs. Amagi looked out the window, calm and curious. Every now and then she checked her phone. They drove on. They ran into traffic. Just as Yoko was about to give up and pass out, Amagi touched Yoko’s arm and said, “We’re here.”

They had arrived at a Western-style hotel, fancy as hell. They were getting out of the car because the hotel staff, dressed in snazzy, black outfits and with little flat hats on their head, were going to park the cars for them. When Amagi stepped out, so did a group of ten other men, all wearing red in some form or another: red glasses, red shirts, red jackets. They closed around Amagi and Yoko. 

“Miss,” said one of the men. He looked young, not much older than Amagi or Yoko. His hair was dyed so light that it was nearly blond, and he wore red sunglasses, even here. “Kasai-san has already gotten the reservation for you.”

“Thank you, Kagami-kun,” Amagi said. “Kagami-kun and Kasai-san, please come with us.” A woman, her black suit and dress interrupted by pink and red panels, stepped in line with Kagami. They escorted Amagi through the hotel lobby, which had marble floors and a richly, ornate carpet. Weird, modern paintings hung on the walls. Colorful squares and diamonds painted on calm, color-blocked backgrounds blinked at Yoko as they walked past. 

The room was a large suite. Kagami stayed outside to guard the door; Kasai, who smiled at Yoko and then giggled for no real reason, joined them indoors. Kasai excused herself to go check the rest of the suite to make sure it was properly clean. Amagi and Yoko sat in the main room. Through the enormous window, they could see Koshiro city sprawled out before them, everything packed close together and tight. It was an older city, built mostly with wood. The Sea of Japan, gray as concrete and still as a stone, stretched for kilometers past the shore. 

A ghastly picture of Jesus Christ pinned to the cross hung over the TV. Yoko wanted to get up and flip it over. 

“It’s an odd choice, isn’t it?” Amagi said, following Yoko’s gaze. “The rest of the hotel has paintings and reproductions of modernist and post-modernist works. I’m not sure why they went back to the European Renaissance scene here.” 

“It’s freaky,” Yoko said. 

“I don’t mind it.” 

“Sure,” said Yoko. “If you don’t mind the gore.” 

“Everything is clean, Miss,” said Kasai. 

“Thank you very much, Kasai-san,” Amagi said. Kasai bowed, and then exited the suite. Yoko, for a moment, was insulted that no one considered her enough of a threat to Amagi to warrant some extra looking after. But then she remembered that Amagi had killed Adachi. … Yeah, she could understand that. Amagi got up and took the painting off the wall. She turned it away from them. 

“Thanks,” said Yoko. 

“You’re welcome,” Amagi said, with a hostess’ generosity that she must have developed during her days at the Inn. Then, with a cooler tone, fit for the boss she was, she said, “I didn’t like the way he was looking at us.” 

Someone knocked on the door. Kasai stepped back in, along with an older man, wearing an all-black suit with a red tie. The man bowed, and said, “The preparations are nearly complete.”

“So you have Kunino-san?” Amagi said. “Already?” 

“It is as you thought, Miss,” said the man. “The Takarabe group is in complete disarray. Kunino-san barely has enough men to protect himself.” 

“I see,” Amagi said. “Did you bring his cell phone?” 

He handed it over, along with a pack of cards. “Hold this,” Amagi said to Yoko, passing Yoko the cards. Amagi flipped the phone open, and pointed the phone at Yoko. Yoko flinched, half-expecting a poisonous snake to shoot out of it. But the camera went off, harmlessly, twice. She passed it back to the man. Then Yoko and Amagi were alone in the room again. 

 

* 

 

They stayed in the room. Amagi invited Kasai and Kagami, and they all played bridge—the most old lady game Yoko had ever heard of. But when she was playing it with the yakuza, who all bet money in an almost bored, familiar way, it made the part of Yoko’s brain, the part that knew to not stick her hand in a tiger’s mouth, come close to panic. They played for a few hours. Then Amagi excused herself to talk on the phone. Kasai and Kagami went back outside. Yoko watched some television. 

When Amagi came back, she pushed the phone against the side of Yoko’s face and said, “Say something.”

“Say what?” Yoko said. 

“Yoko?” 

Yoko’s whole body jumped up, as though Amagi had just shocked her. She tried to grab the phone, but Amagi, with one of her small, dainty hands, pushed against Yoko’s head. She didn’t need to ask who it was. Even over Amagi’s crap sack phone, she knew that voice. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said. 

“Are you all right?” Seta’s voice was calm and unanxious. It was probably just a show, Yoko thought—but goddamn, she wished that Seta would at least sound more worried. “Are they treating you well?” 

“I’m fine,” Yoko said. “I’m totally fine, where are—”

“That’s enough for now,” Amagi said, taking the phone back. “Yoko-san is well and unharmed. As you can see. … Yes, I’m glad we agree on this. … Yes. You and your people have one chance, Seta-san. We’ll release Kunino-san and I’ll return Yoko-san to Inaba if you bring me the man who shot my father. … I don’t see why there is a problem.” Amagi headed back into the bedroom. The last thing Yoko heard was, “Everyone knows that Takarabe-san is an incompetent who married into the family, Seta-san. … Then I see you do not care for Kunino-san. … Yes.” 

Yoko put a hand up to her throat, as though that’d help her breathe easier. She looked out the window—to the gray, unfeeling sea, the crowded city on the edge of it—and the room felt too small and the ceiling too low and the air too dirty. Everything became, suddenly, tangible. She was a hostage of the Amagi group, trapped in a room with a girl who had killed at least one man, but would never be arrested for it. The dark, stony sea and the frail, wooden buildings below and red, frightening death, all pushing forward, endlessly, on. 

 

* 

 

Amagi took Yoko out of the hotel room and to the dark, sunless part of the city. It was winter. The sun was almost down when they arrived. They went to a rundown shack of a restaurant, and were admitted to the basement. The lights were strong and bright. Smoke, from cigarettes and cigars, stained the ceiling yellow-gray. Kagami and Kasai accompanied them again. Yoko was sure that she saw Watatake and a few other Amagis coming in, too, behind them. 

“Pick a game, Yoko-san,” Amagi said. “Poker, blackjack, or mahjong?” 

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Yoko said. “What if they try to cut off your hands or something?” 

“I did this all the time in Tokyo. It was frightening at first, because I didn’t have many assets. For the first few days, they kept threatening to sell me into prostitution.” There was a little pause. Amagi surveyed the room. Her eyes were half-lidded, the lashes dark with mascara. Her lips, Yoko noticed, were a coral red. “I never could find a way to tell Chie.” 

Maybe the worried crease between Amagi’s eyes meant that she was worried about Satonaka. But maybe Amagi was just sizing up the competition. 

“You should have just worked at that cafe.” 

“This is what I’m good at,” Amagi demurred. 

“Mahjong,” Yoko said. 

“A wise choice.”

They went to the very back of the basement room. Amagi and her people talked for a little while. They decided on a table facing the door. Amagi played against a group of gaudy-clothed strangers. Yoko and her people watched. The amount of money bet on the game slowly, steadily, ratcheted higher. The game was played in near absolute silence; the only sound were tiles being laid down, bets called, and moves declared. 

Amagi lost two hundred thousand yen in the first game, and won nearly eight hundred thousand in the second. She took a smoke break after the third game, where she won five hundred thousand. She offered Yoko a cigarette, long, thin, and black, which Yoko accepted. But she couldn’t get more than a few puffs without choking. 

Amagi was on her second cigarette when Watatake leaned in and said, “Seta-san is here, Miss.” 

“Did she bring the shooter?” Amagi said. 

“No. She’s come alone.”

Amagi’s eye swept the room one more time. Then she said, “Tell Seta-san I’ll meet her once I’ve finished this cigarette.” 

Amagi took her time, taking long, deep breaths that made Yoko’s lungs cringe in sympathetic pain. Once she was done with the cigarette, she left it in an ashtray. 

“Come with me,” she said. 

They went up the stairs and back to the restaurant. Seta was sitting at a corner table. Her hair had grown, and she was wearing a stylish, sharp white outfit with a bright blue shirt. There was a faded, yellow bruise on her neck—no, not a bruise, Yoko realized. A freaking, goddamned hickey. She rose when Amagi, Yoko, Kagami, and Watatake came to her table. Kagami sat with Yoko and Amagi. Watatake remained standing, possibly because he was enormously tall and barrel-chested. Seta glanced in Yoko’s direction, then turned back to Amagi. 

“Well,” said Seta. “I didn’t think we’d be meeting like this again, Amagi-san.” 

“Really?” Amagi said. “I knew we’d meet again the second I found out that you were with the Takarabes.” 

Seta beckoned for the waiter, who brought them a pot of tea. Kagami poured for everyone. Neither Seta nor Amagi touched their cups. Yoko realized, right after she gulped down half a cup, that they were both thinking about the risk of poison. Shit. “I told you, Amagi-san. That you were a romantic.” 

“I wouldn’t say so,” Amagi said. “Why did you come, Seta-san? I told you to bring the shooter.” 

“Namatame-san is dead,” Seta said. “There is no one to bring you.” 

“A likely story,” Amagi said. “Surely Takarabe-san values Kunino-san over some common hitman. He is one of the few men who has always supported her in the family.”

“On the contrary, Takarabe-san cares very little for anyone these days.” Seta rubbed her nose with her fingers. “I did not come to talk to you about Kunino-san. I did not come to you as an agent of the Takarabe group.” 

So Seta had come for Yoko? Yoko’s heart leapt into her throat—then she beat it down, before Seta could say something dumb and disappointing. 

Amagi watched Seta, the same way she watched the mahjong players. Then she said, “If you wish to assure Yoko-san’s safety, then the best thing you can do is to turn over this Namatame-san. I do not wish to harm her, but you know as well as I do what kind of world this is.” 

“I can give you something better than Namatame. I can give you Nami Takarabe herself.” 

“She’s lying,” Kagami said. “She’d never betray Takarabe.” 

“I agreed to come to St. Justine to escape her. I never thought she would find me again,” Seta looked, wanly, at Amagi. “I can tell you anything you need to know about her. Where she lives, what she does during the day, what she eats.” 

Amagi gave Seta the kind of look one typically gave to people vomiting into a bush. “The Takarabe group have lost many of their contacts in Inaba and Okina,” she said. “There’s no reason for me to do anything for you. Not unless we exchange some information.” 

Seta touched the back of her hand to her mouth. She looked down at the entrance to the gambling parlor; then she looked back at Amagi. “What do you want from me?” Seta said. 

Amagi wrote down an address on a napkin, and handed it to Seta. “Here is where Kunino-san is being kept. You can have him back, as promised. I want the man who shot my father.” Seta looked down at the napkin. Then she pocketed it into her jacket. 

“He went into hiding. But he’s seeing someone. An enka singer named Misuzu Hiiragi.”

“I see,” said Amagi. And that was it. Seta stood and excused herself. Once she had left the restaurant, Amagi leaned over to Watatake and said, “Order a hit on Misuzu Hiiragi. We’ll flush him out. I’m going back downstairs for another game.” She stood, and her hair spilled around her back and came to rest on her shoulders. She smelled like shampoo and smoke, and looked as though she belonged in this city and in this restaurant more than she had ever belonged at St. Justine. And so, Yoko thought, with a sickening clench of her stomach, had Seta.


End file.
